What is Electricity?

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 12, 4 October 1929, Page 29

What is Electricity?

D=rw ITIONS from fiye dictionaries are as follow :- (1) The property of attracting light. (2) That power in bodies which attracts and repels substances. (3) The name of the cause of cer--tain phenomena of attraction and repulsion. ~ (4) Peculiar condition of the moiecules of a body, or of the surrounding ether, developed by -friction, chemical] action, heat or magnetism. (5) A power in nature, a manifestation of energy, exhibiting itself when in disturbed equilibrium or ‘in activity by a circuit movement, the fact of direction which involves polarity, or opposition of properties in opposite directions. ‘ he last two are from the Oxford ‘and Webster dictionaries respectively. A number of definitions from various eminent men have recently been published, and the three quoted below are much more reconcilable to present-day knowledge. The first, from "Modern Views of Blectricity," by Sir Oliver Lodge, is as follows :- {1) Electricity may possibly be a form of matter-it is not a form of energy; but the same is true of water, or air, and we do not, therefore, deny them to be forms of matter. The second, a rather theosophically inclined definition, by the Borough Blectrical Engineer of Aylesbury. states: (2) Electricity is a flow of negative electrons, just aS wind is a flow of air particles: The negative electron is a vortex of ether, a helical streak of motion in the unpalpable glycerine of.that primordial sea. The positive electron is a hole in space where the fohatic energy enters and -Orders manifestation, that transient streakiness of the ether matrix. The third, from Hutchinson’s "Past and Future Developments of Dlectricity," claims that :- (3) The sun is the original source of all electricity, which is imprisoned light, heat, and power, and has momentum, mass and weight. ¢ The first five definitions given, though now obsolete, are still used universally, and it is certainly high time that they were replaced by something more in accordance with presentday knowledge.