Viewing page 109 of 182

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[Column 1 SPLIT-CUT ARTICLE]]

NORMAL ACTION OF THE ATMOSPHERE.

READ BEFORE THE METEOROLOGICAL SECTION OF THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE AT THE NOVEMBER MEETING [[right margin]] 1873 [[/right margin]]

By PROFESSOR WISE. 

  When we attempt to explain natural phenomena the best way to arrive at correct conclusions is to examine the facts face to face whenever we can.  We need not be deterred from this method of investigation because old notions and purely hypothetical deductions are considered standard and fixed rules of explanation.  Where there are no rules at all it becomes an open question, and where the rules are inadequate they stand open for correction, and where the facts are contrarywise to the rule they are unworthy of authority.  We need only be governed by the positive laws of nature as they are manifested in the harmonies of her works.
  We have demonstrable proof that our planet is spherical; and that it revolves around the sun; and that it rotates on an axis; and that it has an atmosphere; and we have positive proof that it has zones of heat and cold; and that the axis of its diurnal motion is inclined to the plane of its orbit, so as to cause the sun to shine more on one half than the other alternately, producing the seasons.  About these conditions, as relative to the moon, some exist aud [[and]] some do not.  The evidence that the moon has no axial motion is as good as that it has--the latter is simply analogical.  Instrumental proof we have that the moon has no atmosphere surrounding it, and from this we may deduce that it has no rotation on its axis.  Now reasoning from a mathematical and mechanical stand point we shall find that the motion of the atmosphere around the earth from west to east is the result of the attraction of gravitation, or in more expressive words, the pull of gravitation.  The latter is the only comprehensive idea of that law of force in nature.  We know that where power is conveyed from a motor to machinery, it is so conveyed by a "middle man"--a belt.  And we know that the belt always has a slip on the pulley, and that by virtue of its slip moves faster than the surface of the pulley.  It is now conceded by physicists that the sun of our system is the source of power of all power, on our earth and in the heavens.  The atmosphere that surrounds our earth is equal to a weight of fifteen pounds to every square inch of its surface.  Since the number of square inches of the whole earth is so vast, we will take only a mile square of its surface for comparative elucidation.  From this we have sixty billions two hundred and seventeen millions three hundred and forty-four thousand pounds weight of air for every square mile of the earth's surface. This atmosphere is mobile and elastic, and as it joins the outer covering of our globe it necessarily receives the direct and initial action of the sun.  That is to say, the attractive force of the sun makes its impact upon the atmosphere by its pull of gravitation, and since the air is more elastic than an india-rubber belt, it is pulled round the earth form west to east a little faster than the surface of the solid earth itself.
  You may deem this a very mechanical notion, but you must not forget that nature itself is a great and grand mechanism, however so much you may mystify it with metaphysical conceptions and occult divinations.  Force is force, whether you tear it from its occult recesses by the evolution of heat in combustibles under the steam boiler, and thence to the movement of machinery by a rubber belt, or whether it is applied from the sun to the earth through the belt-like intervention of the atmosphere, the momentum of which is sufficient to tear the earth to pieces should it happen to become clogged in its axial rotation.
  The heat [[column truncated]]power of the sun, the motion of the atmosphere, the momentum of air and earth are positive physical facts, and the explanation of the phenomena must be sought in the mathematical reductions that naturally flow from these facts.  That the equatorial heat belt and the cold polar areas produce surface ripples in this immense ethereal ocean of matter, is not at all incompatible with the law of the normal motion of our atmosphere.  Neither do the trade-winds of the tropical belts, blowing from East to West, contradict this rule, since they are the result of local heat, and these very drifts of contrary moving surface air rise up as expanded by heat to be hurled along with the great mass of atmospheric volume that hugs the earth.  The shifting of the heat belt of the earth twenty-three degrees each side of the equator gives rise to the wabbling motion of the poles, termed nutation; also, nodding of the poles.  When we are in the summer solstice the atmospheric belt acts most on the northern hemisphere, and produces more momentum in it than in the counter half, and that gives rise to the nutation. In our winter solstice the action is reversed; but in both instances the two poles must describe the motions in space which has given to astronomical calculations so much complexity.

[[Column 2 SLIP-CUT ARTICLE]]

  If our earth had no elastic atmosphere around it, it would have no axial motion, but would swing around the sun as listless as does the moon-one-half of it in constant sunlight, the other half as constantly in a cold and dreary absence of the sun's life-giving effects. 
  The moon having no heat in itself can produce no power, and its non-attractive force upon the earth is proven in the absence of that reciprocal action our planet that must necessarily ensue under the law of attraction of gravitation, by causing it to have an excentric rotation around a point one eightienth [[eighteenth]] the distance of the moon from the earth's centre.  It has no such motion | The moon has no such atmosphere, hence it has no power-belt, and hence it has no axial rotation.  The law of gravitation cannot be estimated as a metaphysical nonentity.  If it is a power it has a cause, and we cannot look for that cause beyond the source of the sun, so far as the bodies of our solar system are concerned, and that much admitted, since it cannot be mathematically contradicted, it follows that the axial motion of the earth is due to that force, and there is not a more rational way of explaining the action of the sun upon our earth than through the intervention of the atmosphere.  That this action should manifest itself in a west to east direction of the atmosphere and the earth, must be the necessary mechanical result of the earth's orbital motion in the same direction. We find that a revolving body throws off its surface matter in a tangenital [[tangential]] line corresponding to the forward motion of that body.  The boy's sling that hurls its stone forward is a demonstration of this law. If we ascribe the eastward motion of the atmosphere to the earth's rotation and its heat force around the equator, the motion of air would be as we find it, but it does not so fully and fairly explain the phenomenon, as does the natural action just described, and accredited to that great central engine, that is producing power with a fervent heat, in the combustion of the immense quantity of heat-giving matter that the spectroscope reveals to science, as being present to its fire.  What else is our grand solar cosmogony, but a piece of natural machinery, a living organic mechanism; and what other way of explanation can we devise than that which we find the artifice of human understanding as developed in the machinery made by men's hands?  The very best that we can do is but a weak attempt to copy and imitate nature. 
  To get up and into this power belt, and to ride upon it with the aid of our well-known aerial machinery, is as simple an act to the comprehensive mind as is the act of the playful youth that gyrates on the flying horse or the revolving carriage. 
  If the earth had a uniform surface--all land or all water, and its temperature was equal on every part of it, there would be a uniform motion of atmosphere around it from west to east with no deviations of level currents.  But the earth is diversified with land and water--with mountain and valley--with heat and cold; and the atmosphere being so sensitive to change of temperature, and also being so easily disturbed by obstruction and friction, we find the cause of all the deviations of currents and counter-currents, as well as for the storms of wind, rain, snow, and hail. 
  Many years ago I broached this subject of the atmosphere pulling the world around on its axis, but the science of meteorology was then so little studied that it elicited but little attention.  Finding that my balloon was constantly sailing me eastward, 1 [[I]] naturally looked for the cause.  The best one, outside of my own conception, was that it was the return current of the tropical trade wind.  Now we are in advance of the old ideas, and, if we give due credit to the law of gravitation as an attractive force, and also due value to the weight and bulk of the atmosphere, and then allow the sun to perform its functions in the mode of heat force, we shall have as plain a case in the proposition before us as we can find in any well-appointed machine-shop wherein the machinery is drivenby fire through an engine, belt, pulley, and shafting. 
  If I have failed to convince you of the true cause of the motion of the earth on its axis by the pulling power of the atmosphere as imparted to it by the sun, I trust I have given sufficient interest to the subject to make you think about it, and to incite you to a study of the question in order to find a better explanation of the interesting phenomenon. 

[[Column 3 NEW SLIP-CUT ARTICLE]]

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

IMPORTANT ACTION.

  At a meeting of the Meteorological Section of the Franklin Institute, held on the 4th day of November, A.D.1873, the following resolution was adopted : 
  Resolved. That the corresponding secretary be, and is hereby directed to address, directly by letter, and through the press, a request to all scientific associations and persons throughout the world, who have been and are now engaged in making acquisitions of knowledge in relation to the subject of aerial navigation, and who may do so in the future, that they communicate with this institution in regard thereto, in order that, by gathering into one place all attained knowledge regarding it, something practital [[practical]] may be effected. 

Attest: BASIL SEWALL, Recorder.
JOHN WISE, Corresponding Secretary. 

  Mr. Branson said in offering the resolution he was moved by the belief that the fragmentary ideas and appliances scattered over the civilized world pertaining to this grand desideratum--the navigation of the air--if brought under the enterprising and progressive spirit of American genius, could not fail to make a good starting point in the attempt to perfect air-navigation machinery.  The elements we know are sufficient to serve us in the purpose, and we now want the mechanical instrumentalities, and the best way to get these is by conference with other and all investigators.