Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/577

Rh round it, and obtained thereby greatly augmented effects between suitably placed magnetic poles. Such an armature is employed in the small magneto-electric machine which I now introduce to your notice, and for which the institution is indebted to Mr. Henry Wilde, of Manchester. There are here sixteen permanent horseshoe magnets placed parallel to each other, and between their poles a Siemens armature. The two ends of the wire which surrounds the armature are now disconnected. In turning the handle and causing the armature to rotate, I simply overcome ordinary mechanical friction. But the two ends of the armature coil can be united in a moment, and when this is done I immediately experience a greatly increased resistance to rotation. Something over and above the ordinary friction of the machine is now to be overcome, and by the expenditure of an additional amount of muscular force I am able to overcome it. The excess of labor thus thrown upon my arm has its exact equivalent in the electric currents generated, and the heat produced by their subsidence in the coil of the armature. A portion of this heat may be rendered visible by connecting the two ends of the coil with a thin platinum wire. When the handle of the machine is rapidly turned the wire glows, first with a red heat, then with a white heat, and finally with the heat of fusion. The moment the wire melts the circuit round the armature is broken, an instant relief from the labor thrown upon the arm being the consequence. Clearly realize the equivalent of the heat here developed. During the period of turning the machine a certain amount of combustible substance was oxidized or burned in the muscles of my arm. Had it done no external work the matter consumed would have produced a definite amount of heat. Now, the muscular heat actually developed during the rotation of the machine fell short of this definite amount, the missing heat being reproduced to the last fraction in the glowing platinum wire and the other parts of the machine. Here, then, the electric current intervenes between my muscles and the generated heat, exactly as it did a moment ago between the voltaic battery and its generated heat. The electric current is to all intents and purposes a vehicle which transports the heat both of muscle and battery to any distance from the hearth where the fuel is consumed. Not only is the current a messenger, but it is also an intensifier of magical power. The temperature of my arm is, in round numbers, 100° Fahr., and it is by the intensification of this heat that one of the most refractory of metals, which requires a heat of 3,600° Fahr. to fuse it, has been reduced to the molten condition.

Zinc, as I have said, is a fuel far too expensive to permit of the electric light produced by its combustion being used for the common purposes of life, and you will readily perceive that the human muscles, or even the muscles of a horse, would be more expensive still. Here, however, we can employ the force of burning coal to turn our machine, and it is this employment of our cheapest fuel, rendered possible by