WIG AND RUFFLES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19786, 9 March 1927, Page 11

WIG AND RUFFLES

TWO CENTURIES BACK SCIENTIST COMES TO LIFE Although Queen Anne has, according to common report, passed away, one of her most distinguished scientists, Master Francis Hauksbec, was very much alive last month. With wig and scarlet coat, ruffles, buckled shoes, and hose of silken spendour, Master Hauksbec came to the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and told his audience in the language of 220 years ago, what fit might expect of light and electricity. Master Hauksbee was at the top of his form. Hundreds clamoured in vain for admission (writes a “Daily Chronicle” representative), so it was decided to give an encore lecture. With Hauksbee was his “serving man’’ in the drab wig, coat and hose, and they were revealed to us in the 18th century setting of their laboratory, lit by four candles. When the candles were perforce extinguished, they were relit with flint, steel and tinder-box. It was all very real. The good Hauksbee took snuff often and with heartiness, and when his serving man did not come up to expectations in preparing for the next “remarkable appearance,” he rated him soundly in good Queen Anne language. A wonderful illusion of a scientific demonstration of 200 years ago only vanished when an official turned on all lights, and wc found that the good Hauksbec had been impersonated by Professor E. N. da C. Andrade. Hauksbec showed us exactly what ho did in those Queen Anne days—how he was the first man to build a real electrical machine; how he obtained electrical discharges in evacuated tubes on the study of which the physics of to-day may be said to be founded. Hauksbec began his demonstration by addressing us in this fashion:— “My lords and gentlemen, and, I must add what I should have said first, ladies—for I rejoice to see that so many of my pretty countrywomen are following the example of the famous Duchess of Newcastle and bending their minds to a subject so harmless and so free from all dishonesty as natural philosophy.” And then, rating himself as an “undeserving person,” he went on to give us “divers novel experiments.” He got his air pump to work, and showed us the restoration of a shrivelled apple to its original plumpness. Dowsing all candles, he shook mercury in a vessel from which the air had been removed, and we saw light, and followed it up with a “fountain of fire” produced by a mercury splashing in the exhausted vessel. “I am myself persuaded,” spake Master Hauksbee, “that in the electrical effluvia whose workings you have beheld, lie the seeds of great matters. “When wo consider how by means of this hitherto unheeded influence we may already produce a light which will permit print to be read, may wo not be allowed to conjecture that future ages may find out a means of so increasing the power of the electrical agent that by the mer e turning of a machine a light may be produced which will sur'pass that of these candles, and illuminate a whole room? “When we consider how lively are the motions which this subtle effluvium may produce in light bodies, may we not by a prophetical imagination in our thoughts be bold to believe that an age shall come when chariots may be driven by the electrical power alone?” How true Master Hauskbee had spoken.