A Wonderful Magnet.
Probably the largest and strongest magnet in the world is that at Willet’s Point, New York. It came to be made by accident. Major King happened to see two large 15 inch Dablgran guns lying unused side by side on the dock, and immediately conceived the idea that a magnet of enormous power could be constructed by means of these cannon with a submarine cable wound around them. The magnet, which stands about ten feet from the ground, is eighteen feet long, and has eight miles of cable wound about the upper part of the guns. It takes a force of 2o,Coolba to pull off the armature. A seemingly impossible experiment was performed with some 15-inoh solid cannon balls, the magnet holding several of them suspended in the air, one under the other. The most interesting experiment was the test made of a nonmagnetic watch. The test wae highly satisfactory. The magnet was so powerful that an ordinary watch was stopped stock still as soon as it came within three feet of it, while an American non-magnotic watch was for ten minutes held in front of the magnet, and it did not vary the hundredth part of a second. A sledge hammer wielded in a direo tion opposite to the magnet, feels as though one were irying to hit a blow with a long feather in a gale of wind.
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Bibliographic details
South Canterbury Times, Issue 6965, 14 October 1892, Page 3
Word Count
233A Wonderful Magnet. South Canterbury Times, Issue 6965, 14 October 1892, Page 3
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