Viewing page 35 of 182

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Do Lightning Rods afford Protection?
To the Editor of The Daily Express:
  The “Scientific American” of this week contains a stricture upon the daily press for promulgating “erroneous and unscientific” information upon the subject of “Lightning Conductors.” It hits the New York Tribune specially for answering Mr. Joseph Tait, of Lee county, Iowa, rather doubtingly of the efficacy of rods, Tait having “a lightning rod on his house, and yet it was struck by lightning on the 18th of September, killing a dog, and sending himself and 'six little Taits' sprawling over the floor." This lightning "came down the rod, punched a hole in the cellar wall, and after doing sundry damages, went out the cellar window."
  Now you know, Mr. Editor, how the thing stands in our vicinity; and not long ago you chronicled the destruction of another barn by electrical fire, said barn having had a rod on it.
  In August of 1858 I sent the following communication to the New York Tribune, and in it I used terms that would be comprehensive to the unscientific as well as the scientific, inasmuch as the subject concerns every body. Since that publication I have received a number of letters upon this subject from scientific men, and all of them take the same view of it as contained in the communication. It has not yet received a confutation, and, I hope, for the general good and a correct understanding of the matter, that it will be corrected if wrong. General acquiescence in a doctrine does not substantiate its truth when facts speak to overthrow it. I will say, with the Tribune, "if your readers think we are mistaken, they will continue to invest the cost of 'a protector' with the first lightning-rod pedlar that comes along, 'working upon the fears of the women folks.'"
  The following article is the one referred to, and I would most respectfully call the attention of the "Scientific American" to it. If my theory and facts are wrong, the rod is a protector; if right, the ordinary lightning rod is worse than useless:
  Although I have made electrical machines and "thunder houses"--the latter to demonstrate how the lightning-rod will protect a building from the destructive power of lightning--I have nevertheless asked the question, a hundred times over, contained in the article just referred to. I have even gone further, by taking down the lightning-rod on a building I purchased; and I took it down for protection from electric artillery, i e., not wishing to have an inductive target on my house to be fired at.
  In my observations and investigations for the last ten years in this vicinity, upon lightning rod protection, the conclusion sums up in favor of the rod about as good as do the predictions in the almanac of dry and wet weather in favor of the calendar; that is, the odds are against the predictions: and yet both these things, the rod and the almanac predictions, are household gods receiving the worship of civilized nations, with but few exceptions. Not long ago an electrician of some note suggested that lightning-rods be surmounted by knobs instead of points, but his idea was laughed at as much as my act of taking down the rod, and yet it can be demonstrated by facts that the rod would be and is more efficient in attracting the bolt when it comes in that direction when surmounted by the knob than it is with the point.
  About a year ago I communicated facts and deductions upon lightning-rod protection to The Scientific American of your city, but that valuable journal would not agree to them, and stated, as an instance against my position, that St. Mark's steeple in Venice was struck by lightning three times before the invention of the lightning rod, and but twice since one was put on said building. In our own city, the Lutheran Church steeple, 200 feet high, has been twice struck by lightning, and the rod melted off in one of the explosions. Houses and barns in our city and neighborhood have been struck--some shattered by it and some burned down--upon which lightning rods were peering. To all these facts learned professors and noted electricians say "they were not properly put up." The Smithsonian Institution at Washington City, has been struck by lightning, and it will hardly be questioned that its rod is put up properly.
  Now, then, to the query: "Do lightning rods protect buildings or prevent them from being injured by lightning?" Let us now examine the question upon its intrinsic philosophy. The theory--the philosophy of the lightning rod is, that it will negate the electrical battery of the sky. That it draws the charge from Jupiter's gun with its ramrod before he gets it completely loaded with his destructive bolts It does not pretend to spike his cannon with a rattail file, not to catch his bolts upon its point, but it pretends to draw the powder from his gun insidiously and silently just as you may and can negate the electrician's "prime conductor" when he is trying to charge it, by holding the point of a needle insidiously within its electrical sphere.
  This is the protective character of the lightning-rod. Electricians claim for it the power and efficiency of negating the electrical cloud when such cloud comes in proximity to its point--say within a hundred feet--a greater distance than the "thunder-house experiment" guarantees. Now, then, how often does a surcharged cloud pass within the distance of the rod? It may sometimes happen to high steeples, but even in such cases the ball and vane surmounting them will be likely to produce the differently contingent effect-- i.e., bring down the bolt, [[?]] of drawing off the surcharge silently as its [[?]] assigns to it.
  I am not confusing Franklin's theory of electricity and lightning-rods. His lightning rod was projected into the electrical magazine - that is, into the cloud-region, and thus he tapped, as it were, Jupiter's powder-mill. His was a preventive, not a defense, as the modern lightning-rod must be, if it be anything protective; and experience shows that lightning-rods, on houses do not give them any protection which houses without them have not. My own observation leads me to adopt the negative as the safest of the two.
  Now, if electricians claim for the lightning rod the power of protecting the house by the rod receiving the bolt (exploded electricity,) then they should most logically surmount the rod with a knob instead of a point. The rod must then constitute the "coat of mail," instead of the ramrod to draw the charge. If you tear down a mill dam suddenly, or the pressure of water within forcibly bursts, the suddenness of the torrent will dash things to pieces that obstruct its path; but if you bore a good-sized auger hole in it, the water will run out innocently, and find its equilibrium without causing damage. Such is comparatively the dynamic effect of atmospheric electricity, if our mechanical and electrical philosophy, studied from the books of men and the alphabet of nature, sets forth the truth.
  I might enlarge and illustrate and state facts, far beyond the limits of allowance of a newspaper communication, but what I have stated here, in the plainest words at my command, are merely given as pertinent to queries in the article referred to, and intended more for the purpose of attracting a sterner investigation to a subject that fills so many with terror, and commands so much attention from the scientific mind of our world.
  As I do not dispute the Franklinian idea of a lightning-rod, it becomes my duty to state how protection can be obtained through it. I will explain. In thunder storms the surcharged clouds are from one to two thousand feet high. A rod to silently discharge these clouds must penetrate the upper air to within attracting distance of the cloud, which, for a long stretch, we will put at a hundred feet from the cloud's lower surface. If the rod penetrate the cloud, so much the better. A metallic conductor raised up to the height of the cloud region by a stationary balloon fastened to the earth, will be a sure "protector" for a whole city, not over two miles square.
  The little rod peering eight or ten feet above the building, is a popular error, as many lightning destroyed buildings with them on hereabouts attest. They mostly serve to coax the bolt from its initial direction towards the rod, thus striking the rod and building together, and often causing destruction of such buildings, where, without the rod, the bolt would have struck somewhere else.
  The argument of "the rod was not put up properly," will no longer do. Facts speak louder than theories, though theories are as old as that of the "divining rod." JOHN WISE. 

THE AERONAUTS AT LOGGERHEADS.
Sharp Letter of Prof. Wise about Prof. Lowe.
THE BIG BALLOON A HUMBUG.

To the Editors of N. Y. Express:
Seeing a communication in your paper headed "Is the Balloon a Humbug?" induces me to say the few following words about Mr. Lowe, and I would not even say a word about it, had not Mr. Lowe, first, through the newspapers, subsequently through a pamphlet, appropriated to himself the credit of inventions and improvements in balloon making and balloon sailing, that justly belong to me, and which are so patent to the public, having been published in my book, "History and Practice of Aeronautics," (a copy of which I present you) issued eight years ago for the very purpose of learning the world all I knew then of ballooning. He also perverts the origin of the idea of a great eastern current in his pamphlet, so as to make it appear that I was not the first to prove that fact. He claims the invention of the sounding-line, of a peculiar linseed oil varnish, of a copper float, of a power in fan-wheels to elevate and depress the balloon.
  All these things you will find in my book published in 1850, and from which Mr. Lowe has unscrupulously attempted to pirate my hard earned and weather-beaten thunder in balloon progress to his own glory, or shame, as the case may yet be, and thus, only, am I induced to speak a word in self-defense, and to the  maintenance of truthful history in the progress of the art.
  I may also be permitted now to say that Mr. Lowe is an aeronaut of 17 months chronology, and of no scientific attainments, and he has not made ten reputable ascensions. By profession he is a "Magician," - by nature a man of very gentlemanly demeanor, by practice in balloon progress an unscrupulous plagarist.
  When Mr. Lower first disclosed his plan of a big balloon to me, in August last, he impressed me with the belief that he was really in earnest to make the attempt to cross the Atlantic, and he invited me to take a seat in his air ship for that voyage; but before he had progressed far in his work, I plainly saw that he would not be likely to succeed, even so far as a fair start, as he was deficient in practical knowledge; and very superficially versed in the philosophy of ballooning, and consequently refused his offer to take a passage with him - not believing in its possible success, I refrained from having my name associated with the scheme.
  I am not disposed to say that Mr. Lowe never intended to try the experiment, but like your correspondent, whose communication attracted my attention, I would ask, why was that most remarkable spell of calm, favorable weather of twelve days, just past, not taken advantage of, if there was any sincerity in the world-heralded announcement. When Mr. Gager provided the Atlantic balloon, and had it announced in Harper's Weekly that we would make the attempt to sail from St. Louis to New York, we tried it at once, and succeeded in getting over all the ground we proposed, and a little more. We did not fritter away our good day of grace that served us to fill the balloon and start in good weather, and in good faith to our announcement.
  If Mr. Lowe has been playing upon public credulity, in order to do something else than try to cross the Atlantic, it should only be considered as one of his biggest "slight of hand" performances, upon a very big audience, with a very big gas bag made out of nine cent per yard muslin.
  As I intend to try the Transatlantic voyage myself next Summer, you will excuse me being thus plain, as I am also willing to be tried by the same exposure of intentions and abilities that I have candidly awarded Mr. Lowe.
Lancaster, Nov. 12, 1859. JOHN WISE.

New-York Daily Tribute
SYSTEMATIC BALLOONING.
CIRCULATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE-WIND CURRENTS.

To the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune.
SIR: The circulation of the atmosphere, as laid down by Halley, and still further traced by Maury, and the wind currents springing therefrom, are all as obedient to law, and as constant in their motion, as is the blood in the animal system. As the lungs vivify and heat the blood, and the heart, as a suction and force pump, receives and distributes it through all its tortuous courses from the center to the extremities of the animal body, so does the torrid zone of the earth heat the atmosphere, and the centripedal and centrifugal forces of its revolutions receive and distribute the air of Heaven to keep up life and heat on its surface. According to Maury's wind and current charts, the atmosphere circulates from the equator to the poles, and from the poles back to the equator. The horse latitudes, or belts of high barometrical pressure and calms, resemble so much the right and left ventricles of the human heart, and the equatorial planes the lungs, that it reminds one strongly of the notion of the renowned Kepler of the world being a huge and breathing animal.
  As this atmospheric circulation theory is founded on facts as indisputable as is the system of Gulf streams and Ocean currents, we may take it as an established science, and one that will give us encouragement beyond what we have experimentally looked for in the uses and, heretofore claimed, prospects of systematic ballooning. That we have currents constantly blowing from west to east is no longer a supposition; that is abundantly proved. How these currents proceed, from the Halley and Maury system of trade winds, is not clearly explained. Maury surmises that magnetic power has something to do with it. However that may be, it is enough for us to know, for the purposes of aerial navigation, that they do exist.
  That there should be nodes of high barometrical pressure and belts of calms, as laid down by Maury, is as natural as that there are tidal midriffs in Long Island Sound, from the tide-wave flowing in at both ends of the channel. These midriffs also drive the water into and far up the little channels that lead into the Sound Gulf, producing the same sort of flowing motion in the water, that the atmospheric midriff produces in its nodal forces. Whether that is a sufficient explanation, without the aid of magnetic force, for the cause of these eastern currents, does not affect our present object of investigation. The currents are there, and we may avail ourselves of their locomotive power by using them as the transports of balloons, freighted with passengers and merchandise, if we will.
  The belt calms of Cancer and Capricorn certainly indicate a motion in the atmospheric ocean, that gives us the best of encouragement in the prospect that we can also go north and south with balloons, as well as the directions we positively know we can, of east in our latitude, and west with the intertropical trades.
  When I first took up the idea of using the atmospheric currents for aerial navigation-brought about by the constant going of my balloons from west to east, and the evidence of these currents existing in England and France, by the balloons in those countries also going east when they attained considerable altitudes-I only hoped for the establishment of a system of ballooning in the temperate zones, and that system confined to long voyages from west to east, and around the globe; but the observations of Halley, and the scrutinizing philosophy of Maury, have opened a much broader field for the practice of this noble art, and its uses to the general purposes of mankind.
  To elucidate in a practical manner these unused resources of nature, and to bring them into the province of commercial economies, is the prime object of my service in practical ballooning. My transatlantic enterprise would be insignificant, through successful, without the intention of rigid exploration in the interoceanic and intercontinental courses of the ever-moving wind currents. Maury's profound deductions of the surface currents, which have done so much for the mercantile marine, are the fruits of practical information. The same course pursued in aerial navigation will bring about its useful establishment. I hope to give such good account, should I be fortunate enough to complete my outfit, in my transatlantic voyage, as to be sufficient to establish the belief that it is worth pursuing to its ultimate general use. An empty ambition to cross the Atlantic with a balloon for ambition's sake would be to me an easy task, were that my sole object; but, "cui bono," unless something useful is to spring out of it. Of itself, it would be a "nine-days wonder," as was the St. Louis trip, had it no other merits than empty fame. The St. Louis trip confirms my belief in Maury's "loxodromic," or, plainer speaking, spiral curves of the wind currents. I noticed this peculiarity of the winds long ago, but took it to be the more amplified phenomenon of the little whirlwinds that we often perceive in the street dust as it is whirled upward. In tracing our St. Louis trip upon the map, taking such points of transit made in the night as we could learn with several points that I have learned since, from adopting the practice of ordering a "halloa" when we crossed towns, and noting the time of these signals, I find we made the curves that Maury assigns to the general character of the atmospheric currents. These observations are meager, it is true, but sufficient to stimulate a more ardent and persevering investigation of the subject.