AN ACCOUNT OF
A SERIES OF EXPERIMENTS
MADE WITH
A LARGE MAGNETO-ELECTRICAL MACHINE.
BY E. M. CLARKE, M.S.A.
Read September 4th, 1838.
In presenting an account of the following series of experiments to the London Electrical Society, I do not hesitate to state those in which I was unsuccessful, as well as those in which I succeeded—although it may be evident that the former preponderates. At the same time, I may with truAh affirm, that I consider the new facts elicited, moA than compensate me for the time and labour employed in their development.
The Magneto-Electrical Machine, with which the experiments I am about to detail were performed — I believe, greatly exceeds, in dimensions, any hitherto made; its construction was commenced by me as far back as May 1837 ; it consists of 10 steel bars, each 4 feet long, but in the usual form of a horse-shoe, and the whole weighing 156 lbs.
My first arrangement of the machine was dividing the magnets into two equal parts, these were connected together by a common axis upon which rotated the inductors. The Quantity arrangement being at one side, the Intensity arrangement at the other. The results obtained with the machine in this form, were so opposite to what I had anticipated, that 1 suspected my arrangement was defective. The Quantity inductor was as usual furnished with a short coil of thick insulated copper wire, and the Intensity inductor with 7860 yards of fine copper wire. On trying the Intensity arrangement with the voltameter, to my astonishment, no decomposition took place, although the shock obtained from it was most excruciating, I may add, even dangerous. Prompted rather by the spirit of experimental inquiry than encouraged by any expectation of obtaining such an effect as that which actually resulted, I next tried the decomposing power of the Quantity inductor, by which I obtained one cubic inch of the mixed gases in four minutes.
This being a novel fact, not only to me, but also to those scientific friends, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, I was induced to imagine, that the cause might be traced to a sort of compound action produced by the rotation of the two inductors, in the way I have