AMUSING EPISODES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 3 November 1925, Page 5

AMUSING EPISODES.

JOKES THAT MADE HISTORY. It is 180 years ago since a chain of monks 900 feet long and a company of 180 guardsmen received an electric shock from a Leyden jar, newly" invented from a French priest to amuse the King. It. seems incredible now that at the outbreak of the Great War a glorified jam jar, wrapped in the kind of tinfoil that comes off chocolate, was - used for wireless, and that when British admirals sent out battle orders to their fleets the safety of the British Empire depended upon the jars, harried by tens of thousands of volts, not cracking with the heat. It was only when experts hurried off to India and Peru to explore mines of little-known mica that the precious substance was mined and treated in sufficient quantities to enable the 169 years’ old Leyden jar to be replaced by the new condenser. Happily Great Britain was one of the first to show an official interest in the condenser. In 1913 William Dnbilier. the American inventor, who had improved on the Leyden iar, testified before the British War Office Wireless Committee. From such bginnings sprang the instrument which has made possible modern wireless. It was a far cry from the days of the chain of monks to August 4, 1914. when the winds of the world were thick with life-and-death messages. Central Europe saw the birth of the condenser in 1745, when a clergyman. Dean von Kleist, of the Cathedral of Camin playing with a brass nail and an empty bottle, discovered their electrical peculiarities (writes Victor Francis in the Daily Mail). That amusing scientist, the Abb© Nollet, made great capital out of the jar in France. He used to kill birds with its electrical discharge to amuse the ladies of the Court. Jealous rivals could only kill worms. Then one day he staged a great show to please the King of France. One hundred and eighty Royal Guardsmen were lined up. and the end men were given brass knobs attached to Leyden jars. The electric shock ran through the whole company, and every man sprang to attention. Then the chain of docile monks. 900 feet long, was treated to the thrill, and the venerable men sprang into the air. This sport of kings was of great scientific use, for the Abbe Nollet, in order to electrify so many people, had to use not one Leyden jar, but a whole battery. This led to the condenser.

Before William Dubilier began building condensers of thousands of sheets of mica the cumbrous glass “jam-jar” was liable to break easily—for instance, when the guns were fired in a battleship. Aeroplanes dared not carry it, and, from the nature of the jam-jar, violent discharges were wont to occur, cracking the bottle through heat, shortcircuiting the wireless set, and filling the air with ozone, which has been known to render the operator unconscious. If the clerical joker gave the world the Leyden jar battery, the man who made the Leyden jar out of date made modern wireless possible.