Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/472

BALAKLAVA. BALAKLAVA, ba'la-kUi'va. A small port in the southwest of the Crimea. It is separated by a rocky peninsula from the harbor of Sebastopol, from which it is about six miles distant. The harbor, which affords secure anchorage for the largest ships, is perfectly landlocked, the entrance being so narrow as scarcely to admit more than one vessel at a time. To the east, overlooking the bay, are the ruins of a Genoese fortress, the foundation of which is pierced by numerous chambers and galleries. Balaklava is the Portus Symbolorum of the ancients, and the present name is supposed to be a corruption of the Italian Bella-chiava (fair haven). It was long the seat of a Greek colony. In the Fourteenth Century it fell into the hands of the Genoese, who were expelled in the Fifteenth Century by the Turks. On the acquisition of the Crimea by Catherine II. of Russia it was made a military station. In 1854 the town was occupied by the British, under Lord Raglan. Owing to the negligence and inefficiency of the commissariat the troops were subjected to extreme hardship, and great numbers of them perished of hunger and cold within touch of immense stores of supplies, rendered inaccessible by official red tape. On the heights between Balaklava and the Tchernaya, there was fought, October 25, 1854, a battle between the English and the Russians, signalized by splendid cavalry charges (the famous charges of the Heavy and Light Brigades) on the part of the former. Consult: Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, 8 vols. (London, 1863-1887), of which nearly the whole of the fourth volume is devoted to a minute account of the events connected with Balaklava; also Paget, The Light Cavalry Brigade in the Crimea (London, 1881).

BALA MURGHAB, ba'la moor-giib'. See.

BALAN, ba'IiiN'. An early poem, a later rendering of which was Fierabras, one of the most popular tales of the Charlemagne cycle. An English version of Balan was The Sowdan of Babylon. In the latter romance, Balan is the name of the father of Fierabras. He was overcome by Charlemagne. The Arthurian character, Balan, was the brother of Balin.

BAL'ANCE (Lat. bilanx, having two scales, from bis, twice + lanx, plate). An instrument used for the comparison of two masses, or, speaking less technically, for ascertaining the weight of a body. The balance in its essence is simply a lever (q.v.) or beam poised or suspended so as to move freely about an axis transverse to its length. The force acting on one arm of the lever is produced by the action of gravity on the body whose weight is to be determined, and is equal to its mass m multiplied by g, the acceleration due to gravity. (See .) If the lever is in equilibrium, or the beam at a horizontal position, there must be a force equal, but opposite in direction, acting on the other arm at an equal distance, and as the acceleration due to gravity is a constant for any one point on the earth's surface, and as the arms of the lever are equal by construction, the mass of known magnitude upon which gravity acts must be equal to the mass of the unknown body. If the arms of the balance are unequal in length, it follows, from the law of the lever, that the masses are inversely as the length of the arms. The balance, accordingly, enables us to learn the actual mass of a body by direct comparison with a standard of mass. The spring balance (q.v.), on the other hand, measures the weight or attraction exerted by the earth on a body, and as the force of gravity varies from point to point, the force acting on the spring must vary with the place. The mass of the body which is being weighed is constant, so that the amount that the spring is stretched depends upon the acceleration due to gravity.

Fig. 1.

From the foregoing considerations it will readily be seen that there are two methods which may be followed in the construction of a balance: Either to make the arms equal in length, and then find the number of weights of known value which will produce equilibrium, as in the case of the ordinary balance; or by having a known constant weight whose position, and consequently the effective length of the arm on which it is suspended, can be varied at will, as in the case of the steelyard. These facts were early known, and the balance is one of the first instruments to be used for measurements, having been employed by the ancient Egyptians, as the accompanying illustration testifies, and by other nations of antiquity. The steelyard played an important part in the ordinary commercial transactions of the Romans, and interesting specimens of these balances and their weights have survived which show few if any important variations from the ordinary steelyard of the present.

Fig. 2. — Roman steelyard.

Considering the simple balance, it is found that its first essential is that the arms should be equal, so that when once there is equilibrium the known and unknown weights may be interchanged without disturbing this condition. Otherwise the balance is false, and the weight obtained is not