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Gilbert of Colchester, physician to Queen Elizabeth, made this property the subject of experiment, and showed that, far from being peculiar to amber, it was possessed by sulphur, wax, glass, and many other bodies which he called electrics, from the Greek word elektron, signifying amber. This great discovery was the starting-point of the modern science of electricity.
We are no nearer to a definition of it than the Greek who rubbed a bit of amber and lifted with it a tiny straw, and from amber, Elektron called the something electricity. Are we even as near as that to a definition of the human conscience? The change that had come over Unorna, whether it was to be lasting or not, was profound. The circumstances under which it took place are plain enough.
How early this property was found, or how, we do not know. The name electricity is derived from elektron, the Greek name for amber. The early Chinese and Persians knew of the lodestone, and of the magnetic properties of amber after it has been rubbed briskly. The Romans were familiar with these and other electrical effects.
The only really heavy piece is the boiler, which weighs about 990 pounds. Prof. It was known six hundred years before Christ that when amber is rubbed it acquires the power of attracting light bodies. The Greek name for amber, elektron, was afterward applied to the phenomenon.
The name Electricity is derived from ELEKTRON, the Greek for amber, and Magnetism from Magnes, the name of the shepherd, or, more likely, from the city of Magnesia, in Lydia, where the stone occurred. These properties of amber and lodestone appear to have been widely known. The Persian name for amber is KAHRUBA, attractor of straws, and that for lodestone AHANG-RUBA attractor of iron.
The ancient Greeks knew and used it as we do, and without any reference to what we now call "electricity" their name for it was ELEKTRON. The earliest mention of it is by Homer, a poet whose personality is so hidden in the mists of far antiquity that his actual existence as a single person has been doubted, and he mentions it in connection with a necklace made of it.
But very early in human history, at least six hundred years before Christ, this elektron had been found to possess a peculiar property that was imagined to belong to it alone. It mysteriously attracted light bodies to it after it had been rubbed.
The centripetal tendency, however, did not stop here. In 1916, the two pre-existing cartels were combined with Griesheim Elektron, Weilerter Meer, and various smaller companies in one gigantic cartel, representing a nationalisation of the entire German dye and pharmaceutical industry." The combination was extremely close.
Quoting from an official American report, "Griesheim Elektron, prior to the war, had enormous works chiefly devoted to the manufacture of electrolytic chemicals and became an important factor in the dyestuff business only within recent years, when by absorption of the Oehler Works and the Chemikalien Werke Griesheim, its colour production reached a scale approaching that of the larger houses."
This move on the part of the Griesheim Elektron is interesting as an example of the general tendency which has characterised the development of the German dye industry. This firm, producing inorganic materials and intermediates, absorbed the Oehler Works in order to find an independent outlet for its intermediate products, thus becoming directly interested in dyestuffs production.
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