spark-producing

Updated: May 16, 2025

Friction has nothing to do with the matter. The old-fashioned spark-producing "electrical machine" of our youthful days, in which a glass cylinder or disk was rotated by a handle while a rubber of silk pressed against it, has nothing in common with the dynamo-electric generator, except that in both something turns upon an axis as a grindstone or the barrel of a barrel-organ may do.

Various - Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882