The Earth a Great Magnet; a Lecture Delivered Before the Yale Scientific Club, February 14,1872

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1872 edition. Excerpt: ... the earth A great magnet. A lecture by prof. A. M. ma yer, P/i.D. At the invitation of the Yale Scientific Club, I have the honor to appear before you to deliver a lecture on Magnetism--a subject to which I have given several years of devoted study. Confused by the multiplicity of the facts of this science, and embarrassed by the grandeur of its generalizations, I have resolved to do, what every public lecturer must do who would confer on his hearers any greater benefit than mere temporary amusement and that is, to select from this subject one prominent truth, and to present this to you in simple and striking experiments; but, so to describe and logically connect these experiments as clearly and forcibly to bring the truth before your minds and fix it there. That this method of procedure is necessary, will be evident when you consider that over one hundred men of the highest ability, as original investigators, have toiled, on an average of ten years each, at these problems of magnetism; thus making an aggregate of one thousand years of successful search in the rich mine of natural truth. From this vast accumulation of fact and of theory I s select as my text words given to the world over 270 years ago by Dr. William Gilbert, the physician to Queen Elizabeth. In the year 1600 Gilbert published a work entitled "De Magnete," or, "on the Magnet" (1). In this book I found my text, and thus it reads: "Magnus magnes ipse est globus terrestris," which being interpreted is, " the earth itself is a great magnet." Those who will examine this remarkable book of science cannot fail to observe how skillfully Gilbert handles the experimental or inductive method of research in arriving at the facts and the laws of magnetism; and if he cannot be style