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Some years ago a comet was noticed to have its periodic time shortened an hour or two, and the explanation offered at first was that the shortening was due to friction in the ether although no other comet was thus affected. The idea was soon abandoned, and to-day there is no astronomical evidence that bodies having translatory motion in the ether meet with any frictional resistance whatever.
And as a habit is formed naturally, so it can be formed artificially, by imitation of the unconscious process, by accustoming the brain to the new idea. Let me, as an example, refer again to the minor subject of daily friction, and, within that subject, to the influence of tone. A man employs a frictional tone through habit. The frictional tone is an instinct with him.
The lodestone and the compass; the frictional machine; the Leyden jar; the nature of conductors and insulators; the identity of electricity and the thunder-storm flash; the use of lightning-rods; the physiological effects of an electrical shock these constituted the bulk of the bequest to which philosophers were the only heirs.
While the frictional appliance is still employed in medicine, it ranks with the flint axe and the tinder-box in industrial obsolescence. No art or trade could be founded on it; no diminution of daily work or increase of daily comfort could be secured with it.
Among his writings there is a treatise on electricity, giving many generally unknown instances of frictional electricity which are in good accord with our picture and well worth investigating.
The electric telegraph had its beginnings long before Faraday's time. As early as 1847, Watson had erected a line some two miles in length, extending over the housetops in London, and operated it by means of discharges from an ordinary frictional electric machine.
We put it among the centripetal sensations which, are produced as the movement outlines itself, and which proceed from the contracted muscles, the stretched ligaments, and the frictional movements of the articulations. Effort would therefore form part of all the psychical phenomenology, which is the duplicate of those sensory currents which are centripetal in direction.
It is supported on two broad flat wheels, and is driven by two horizontal gripping wheels; the connection of these with the motor is made by a new kind of frictional gear which I have called nest gear, but which I cannot describe to-day. The motor on the locomotive as a maximum 11/2 horse-power when so much is needed.
"'Why, says I, 'the whole thing is just one of them unpleasant misunderstandings'; and then I started to explain to him about the Huxley Institute theory of frictional electricity and the aurora borealis.
This pad was carried on the end of a vibrating arm whose lateral movement was limited between two adjustable points. Normally, the frictional pressure between the drum and pad would carry the latter with the former as it revolved, but if the friction were removed a spring on the end of the vibrator arm would draw it back to its starting-place.
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