AN AMUSING ELECTRICAL ANECDOTE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XIII, 31 March 1894, Page 295

AN AMUSING ELECTRICAL ANECDOTE.

In his autobiography the late Sir. XV. Siemens relates an amusing anecdote. An Arab called his attention to the fact that when at the top of the Pyramid of Cheops, when he raised his hand with fingers outspread, an acute singing note was heard, the sound ceasing as soon as he let his hand fall. ‘ I found his assertion,’ he writes, ‘to be true. As soon as I raised one of my own fingers above my bead, I felt a prickling in the fingers. That this could only be caused by an electrical phenomenon was proved by the slight electric shock felt on trying to diink out of a wine bottle. So I wrapped a full bottle of wine that I had with mein damp paper, and thus converted it into a Leydenbottle, which was soon strongly charged with electricity by the simple device of holding it high above my head. The Arabs had already become distrustful on seeing small lightnings, as it were, issue from the wine bottles held up by myself and companions, and now held a brief consultation. Suddenly, at a given signal, each of my companions was seized by the guide who had led him up, who now tried to force him to go down again. I myself was standing at the very top of the pyramid, when the sheik of the Arabs came to me and told me, through my interpreter, that the Arabs had determined that we were at once to leave the pyramid, because we were practising magic, and it might damage the chance of their earning a living. On my refusing to obey orders the sheik caught bold of my left band. I had awaited this moment, and held up my right band with the bottle in the attitude of a magician, afterwards lowering it slowly towards the point of the sheik’s nose. When quite close to that feature I telt a violent shock run through the bottle to my own arm, and was certain that the sheik must have received the equivalent. At any rate, he fell speechless on the stones, and a few anxious moments passed before he rose suddenly with a loud cry, and sprang down the gigantic steps of the pyramid with long strides. The Arabs, seeing this, and excited by the sheik’s constant ciies of “ Magic ! magic I” released my companions and followed their leader, leaving us complete masters of the pyramid.’