Chapter XII: The National Research Council 349 (11)

I confess that in the course of my life since my Berlin days I
afforded considerable amusement to my friends whenever I tried
to explain to them the Hertzian experiments by appealing to
what I considered a well-known action of the tuning-fork. Some
of them objected on the ground that this action is just as
difficult to understand as the action of the Hertzian oscillator.
I met this objection by describing to them the action of the
reed in Serbian bagpipes which I watched when I was a boy, and
understood sufficiently well to recognize later in the action of
the tuning-fork a performance similar to that of the reed in the
Serbian bagpipes. I understood the tuning-fork because I understood
the reed. An educated American, I claimed, should find no
difficulty in understanding the action of a simple mechanism which
an uneducated Serbian peasant boy understood.

The Hertzian electrical oscillator, described above, acts like the
tuning-fork. The process of pulling apart the two charges, the
positive from the negative, and of forcing them to the surface of
the spheres by the action of the electrical machine, is a parallel
to the process of deflecting by the pressure of our fingers the
prongs of the tuning-fork from their normal position. In one case
the tuning-fork by its elastic stiffness reacts against the bending
of the prongs. In the electrical case the electrical lines of force
in the space surrounding the oscillator react against the action
of the machine which crowds them into this space by stretching and
compressing them. This is the picture of the action of the lines
of force which Faraday gave me on the island of Arran, but I did
not understand it. In the picture the dotted curves are the Faraday
lines of force and the arrow-heads indicate the direction of the
electrical force. The Hertzian oscillator, and what Helmholtz had
told me before, made Faraday’s language and thoughts much more
intelligible. The work done by the machine is all expended upon the
stretching and compressing of the lines of force into the space
outside of the spheres, that is, upon the _electrification of that
space_.

Compare now the motion of the tuning-fork, after the pressure
of the fingers has been removed, to the electrical motion when
the air-gap has broken down and the action of the electrical
generator suspended. The prongs are driven back to their normal
position by the elastic reaction due to the bending; but when
they reach that position they are moving with a certain velocity,
and their momentum carries them beyond that position; they move
on until the energy of the moving mass has been expended in the
work of bending the prongs in the direction opposite to that of
the original bending. The prongs begin then to move back in the
opposite direction, starting the second cycle of motion. The same
line of reasoning will carry us into the third and fourth and
every succeeding cycle of motion. It is obvious that these cycles
will follow each other during equal intervals of time, which gives
a definite pitch to the tuning-fork. A periodic motion of this
type is called an oscillation or vibration; and it is clear that
it is a periodic transformation of the energy of elastic bending
into energy of motion of the mass of the prongs including the
surrounding air, and vice versa. The motion is finally reduced to
rest when the energy of bending, produced at the start by the work
of the fingers, has been used up. The question, what has become of
that energy? is very important in this connection. The answer is:
It is used up partly in overcoming internal friction and _partly
in overcoming the reactions of the surrounding air, which result
in sound-waves_. A sound-wave is a short name describing the
physical fact that in the air here are compressions and dilatations
alternating at periodically recurring intervals. The production
of sound-waves in the air is a proof that the air in the space
surrounding the tuning-fork participates in the motions of the
tuning-fork.

A perfectly analogous experiment was performed by Hertz with his
electrical oscillator, and his principal object was to find whether
the electrical field, that is, the electrified space surrounding
the oscillator, reacted as did the air driven by the vibrating
tuning-fork; if it did it would develop electrical waves. If these
electrical waves actually existed, what did Hertz expect them to
be? In the description of the oscillator and of its action, given
above, two things only were mentioned: the action of the electrical
machine which charges the oscillator and the reaction of the lines
of force against the tensions and pressures which crowd them into
the surrounding space. The electrical waves can, therefore, be
nothing else than periodic variations of the tensions and pressures
in the lines of force, that is to say, periodic variations in
the destiny of the lines of force in the space surrounding the
oscillator. This was what Hertz had found.

The breakdown of the air-gap in the electrical oscillator and the
consequent suspension of the action of the electrical generator is
analogous to the removing of the pressure of the fingers from the
prongs of the tuning-fork. The electrical charges on the spheres
with the lines of force attached to them, strained by tensions and
compressions, are released, and they move toward each other through
the conducting air-gap. Just as the prongs of the tuning-fork,
after the pressure of the fingers has been removed, cannot remain
in the strained position in which they have been bent, so the
electrical lines of force, after the insulating air-gap has broken
down and the action of the machine been suspended, cannot remain
in the position to which they are stretched; they contract, and
hence their positive terminals on one sphere and the negative on
the other move toward each other. The motion of the strained lines
of force with their terminals, the charges on the spheres, has a
momentum. Maxwell was the first to show that the momentum of the
moving electrical lines of force is equal to the number of magnetic
lines of force which, according to Oerstedt’s discovery, are
produced by the motion of the electrical lines of force.

The motion of the electrical lines of force has not only momentum
but also energy. Employing Faraday’s mode of expression we can say
that the electrical energy of the stretched electrical lines of
force is thus transformed into energy of the electrical motions.
This is perfectly analogous to the passage of the elastic energy
of the bent prongs of the tuning-fork into the energy of motion
of the moving mass of these prongs. Again, just as the momentum
of the moving mass of the tuning-fork bends the prongs in the
opposite direction and continues this bending until that motion
has disappeared, so the momentum of the moving electrical lines of
force will stretch again the electrical lines of force and continue
this stretching until the energy of motion has disappeared, when
the two spheres are charged again, but in the direction which is
opposite to that in the beginning. A new cycle of electrical motion
is then started again by the stretched electrical lines of force,
repeating itself in an oscillatory fashion until the original
electrical energy, produced by the charging electrical machine, has
disappeared.

But where has the energy gone? This question is just as important in this case as it was in the case of the tuning-fork. The old electrical theories answered this question one way, and Maxwell, inspired by Faraday, answered it in another. The old theories maintained that there is no other electrical motion except the motion of the charges along the conducting surface of the spheres and the rods. They paid no attention to the motion of the lines of force, because they knew nothing about them. Their vision did not see the lines themselves but only their terminals, the charges. Hence, according to the old theories, all of the energy imparted by the machine is transformed into heat in the conducting parts of the oscillator.

Hertz was the first to prove that a part of the energy is radiated off into space, in a similar manner as the energy of a tuning-fork is radiated off in the form of sound waves. He detected in the space surrounding the oscillator the presence of electrical waves, that is, periodically recurring variations of the density of the electrical lines of force; he measured their length, and, having calculated the period of his oscillator, he divided the wave-length by the period and obtained the velocity of propagation. It came out, in his earliest experiments, roughly equal to the velocity of light, as the Faraday-Maxwell theory had predicted. The waves were reflected and refracted by insulators denser than air, and all these and other effects Hertz demonstrated to follow the laws which hold good for light, supporting admirably Maxwell’s theory that light is an electromagnetic disturbance. Even this preliminary report which Hertz had sent to Helmholtz convinced everybody that the Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic theory had triumphed, and that our knowledge of electromagnetic phenomena had been wonderfully extended. Subsequent experiments by Hertz and others added more and more laurels to this first victory.

That meeting of the Physical Society in Berlin was what I always considered the inauguration day of the electromagnetic theory. Prior to that day the theory existed in all its beautiful completeness, but it dwelt on high in the celestial heights of Faraday and Maxwell. Continental physicists needed the guidance of a Helmholtz to reach these heights. After that day it came down to earth and lived among mortal men and became part of their mode of thought. It was a heavenly gift which Hertz brought down to earth. Everybody was convinced that the science of light had become a part of the science of electricity.

_This new knowledge was the second great revelation of the nineteenth century. The wonderful things which followed in its wake, even before the nineteenth century had closed, testify to the greatness of that revelation._

I have often asked myself the question, Why did not our Joseph Henry, who discovered the oscillatory electrical motions and operated with apparatus similar to that employed by Hertz, pursue his studies further than he did in 1842? and why did not Maxwell, the formulator of the modern electromagnetic science, perform those ideally simple experiments which Hertz performed? The knowledge of the electrical oscillator was the same in 1865 as in 1887, and Maxwell undoubtedly had that knowledge. History offers an answer to these questions and this answer throws a splendid light upon the character of these two great scientists.

Soon after 1842 Joseph Henry resigned his professorship at Princeton College, and bade good-by to his laboratory where he had made several of his splendid discoveries, and where in 1832 he had constructed and operated the first electromagnetic telegraph, one of the practical results of his great discoveries. This happened long before Morse had ever been heard of. Henry’s fame among men of science was very great and promised to grow even greater if he continued his scientific researches. He was still in his prime, only a few years over forty. But a patriotic duty called him to Washington, where the Smithsonian Institution waited for his skilled hand to organize it and to defend it against the scheming politician. This duty tore him away from his beloved laboratory, and he spent the rest of his life, over thirty years, in Washington as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, as originator of most of the national scientific bureaus of which this country is proud to-day. He was also the first president of the National Academy of Sciences, chartered by Congress in 1863, thanks to his efforts. Physical science under his leadership had rendered valuable service to the country during the Civil War, and the congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences was a graceful recognition of this service. I have already pointed out Joseph Henry’s splendid efforts for the advancement of scientific research in this country and shall return to it later. He was a great scientist, but he was also a great patriot; his country stood first and his own scientific achievements and fame stood second in his heart. That, I am sure, was the reason why he did not pursue any further than he did his researches of electrical oscillations. I will mention here that one of the most gratifying results of my humble efforts was the naming of an electrical unit after his name. My colleague, the late Professor Francis Bacon Crocker of Columbia University, joined me most enthusiastically in these efforts; and the Electrical Congress in Chicago in 1893, at which Helmholtz presided, adopted the name Henry as the unit of electrical inductance; the unit Farad was named in honor of Faraday. No other electrical units are in more frequent use than the Farad and the Henry, particularly in the radio art. No other men contributed to this art as much as Faraday and Henry did.

Maxwell resigned his professorship at King’s College, London, at the end of 1865, soon after he had communicated to the Royal Society his great _memoir_ on the electromagnetic theory. The electromagnetic theory of light which, as I pointed out before, he had called “great guns” in a letter addressed to a friend, was the climax of it. He retired to his country place, Glenlair, in Scotland, and for five years he was free to devote his entire time to study and meditation. That was the highest joy of his life. But the Duke of Devonshire, a loyal Cambridge man, had presented the university with a goodly sum of money for the building and equipment of a physical laboratory. It was to be named the Cavendish laboratory, after Lord Cavendish, the Duke’s illustrious ancestor, who had devoted his life to electrical science. This gift was the Duke’s response to the Cambridge movement in favor of scientific research. Maxwell was called to Cambridge to become the director of the new laboratory, and he responded, knowing well that, from that moment on, most of his time would be devoted to organization and administration. Duty to his university, and to the cause of scientific research in Great Britain, stood higher in his heart than the experimental demonstration of his great theory; that was certainly one of the reasons why Maxwell did not perform those ideally simple experiments which Hertz performed. But as director of the Cavendish laboratory he had trained a number of men, in order to prepare them to push on the line of advance where he had left it; and one of them, in particular, was soon to take the leadership in the rapid development of the Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic theory.

The examples of Henry and of Maxwell must have been in Andrew White’s mind when in 1873 he spoke those memorable words which I quoted before and will quote here again:

I will confine myself to the value, in our political progress, of
the spirit and example of some of the scientific workers of our
day and generation. What is the example which reveals that spirit?
It is an example of _zeal_, ... of _thoroughness_, of _bravery_,
... of _devotion to duty_ without which no scientific work can
be accomplished, ... of _faith_ that truth and goodness are
inseparable.

The Hertzian experiments created quite an upheaval in the research programme of the Physical Institute; everybody seemed anxious to drop his particular subject of research and try his hand at the Hertzian waves. Several candidates for the doctor’s degree yielded, but I resisted and returned to my problem in physical chemistry, and plodded along as if nothing had happened. I was very anxious to finish my research, get my doctor’s degree, and return to the United States. But I soon found out that there are currents in human life which can influence the course of life of a young scientist much more powerfully than even a new and powerful current of thought in physical sciences.

During the first two months of 1888, Nikola, the Bosnian Serb, began to look worried. He informed me confidentially that he had received bad news about the health of his great “komshiya,” the aged Kaiser. The audiences at the palace were separated by longer and longer intervals, and Habel’s long table began to look deserted; the old generals with their splendid uniforms were conspicuously absent and the historic chop-house began to look commonplace. The daily parades of the guards were finally suspended, and there were no expectant crowds in front of the Imperial palace. The gay life of Unter den Linden became very much subdued. Finally the historic event occurred: the great emperor died on March 9, 1888. Berlin went into mourning and prepared for a funeral such as Germany had never seen before. “I have secured a balcony for you and your friends right over my store,” said Nikola; “I want you and your friends to see the funeral procession as my guests.” His grief over the death of the old emperor was really pathetic. He wanted me and my American friends to see the great procession which, according to his gloomy forebodings, was to mark the first step downward in the wonderful development of the German Empire. When, consoling him, I pointed out the well-known virtues of Crown Prince Frederick, he took hold of his larynx and his gesture indicated that he expected the death of the Crown Prince from his incurable malady. “What then?” I asked him. He answered: “Ask your Bismarck and Moltke, Helmholtz and Siemens; they are your oracles, perhaps they can answer your question; no ordinary mortal can.”

Nikola had never met my American friends whom he mentioned in his invitation, but he had heard a great deal about them. My classmate at Columbia, A. V. Williams Jackson, now the distinguished Orientalist and professor at Columbia University, was at that time at the University of Halle, studying with the great Orientalist, Professor Geltner. He had visited me in Berlin and I returned his visit by spending with him a week-end at Halle. This was shortly before the great Kaiser’s death. Jackson’s mother and two sisters were there on a longer visit, and for two days I felt that I was back in New York again, and I was supremely happy. On the way back to Berlin I could not dismiss from my mind the memory of my mother’s words: “You must marry an American girl if you wish to remain an American, which I know you do.” Ever since my return from Halle, I could hear these words ringing in my ear no matter where I was, in my lodgings, in the laboratory, in the lecture-rooms, or even in Nikola’s store. Nikola had read my thoughts, and when he mentioned my American friends he meant Jackson and his mother and sisters at Halle. Well, they came, they saw, and they conquered. One of Jackson’s sisters went to Italy during that spring and I followed; she returned to Berlin to join her mother and I followed; she went to the island of Norderney, in the North Sea, to spend a part of the summer season, and I followed. The Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic theory and the Hertzian experiments, my research in physical chemistry, and the learned essays of Helmholtz and Willard Gibbs, and of all the other fathers of physical chemistry, disappeared from my mind as if they had never been there. The only problem that could find a place there was the question: Will she accept me? She finally did, and I made a bee-line for New York, in order to find out how soon I could get a job there.

The Columbia authorities were organizing at that time a new department in the School of Mines, the Department of Electrical Engineering, and they were glad to see me and consult me about it. It was to start its work a year from that time, that is, the end of September, 1889. I was offered a position in it as “Teacher of Mathematical Physics in the Department of Electrical Engineering.” A very long title, indeed, but such it was and an interesting bit of history is attached to it. I accepted gladly and hurried back to Europe proud as a peacock. My fiancée and her family met me in London and I was married in the Greek church, according to the rites of the Orthodox faith, the faith of my mother and of all my ancestors.

“Marriage gives that fulness to life which nothing else can give,” said Helmholtz when I saw him again in Berlin and informed him that I was married and that I had been promised an academic position at Columbia College. He approved my dropping the experimental research and substituting in its place a mathematical research in physical chemistry. This research was finished in the early spring and I sent it to Helmholtz who was then in Baden-Baden. He telegraphed: “Your successful effort approved and accepted.” Never before nor since did I ever receive a telegram which made me more happy. The examinations gave me no serious trouble, and in the late spring of that year I had my doctor’s degree and became a citizen in the world of science. The three theses which, according to old German custom, every candidate seeking promotion to the dignity of a doctor of philosophy must frame and defend publicly are given here, in order to show my final mental attitude which was formulated by my scientific studies in Europe.

I. Instruction in Physics in the preparatory schools should be as much as possible a practical one.

II. The Thermodynamic methods of Gibbs, von Helmholtz, and Planck form the most reliable foundation for the study of those physical processes which we cannot analyze by ordinary dynamics.

III. The Electromagnetic Theory of Light deserves more attention than it has received so far in university lectures.

Usually these theses, appended to German doctor dissertations, are not taken very seriously either by the candidate, who is to be promoted, or by anybody else. But I took my theses very seriously. The first summed up President Barnard’s doctrine relating to scientific instruction, which I described before in connection with my description of the American movement favoring scientific research in American colleges and universities; the second summed up my admiration for the new science of physical chemistry first started by our own Josiah Willard Gibbs; and the third summed up my love for the Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic science. On these three questions in physical science I had, I thought, quite clear and definite ideas; and that gave me much confidence that I was about to return to the United States sufficiently equipped to render service in return for some of the many favors which I had received.

As the ship which carried me back to the United States entered New York Harbor I saw on my right Castle Garden; it looked the same as it did fifteen years before, when I first entered on the immigrant ship, and it reminded me of that earlier day. I said to my bride, who was standing by my side, that I did not carry much more money into New York Harbor than I did fifteen years before, when I first looked upon Castle Garden, and yet I felt as rich as a Crœsus. I felt, I told her, that I owned the whole of the United States, because I was sure that the United States owned me; that I had an ideal American bride, who had assured me that I had lived up to the standards of an ideal American bridegroom; and that I had a fine position in a great American institution and strong hopes of filling it to everybody’s satisfaction. I enumerated all these and other things to my bride and wound up by saying, jokingly: “I have also some prospects which modesty prevents me from mentioning,” and then I added: “These are the only worldly goods with which I thee endow.”

X

THE FIRST PERIOD OF MY ACADEMIC CAREER AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

The new “Department of Electrical Engineering in the School of Mines of Columbia College” had announced its courses of instruction quite a number of months before I arrived in New York. The late Francis Bacon Crocker, at that time the newly appointed instructor in electrical engineering and my future colleague and life-long friend, had been consulted with regard to these courses, and he was most liberal to the theoretical side, which was to be my share of the instruction. He attached much importance to the fundamental theory, although he was a practical engineer. The new department was to be independent of the other scientific departments. We had some difficulty, however, in maintaining that independence; the older departments of engineering showed a disposition to claim some right of guardianship over the new infant department. For instance, many chemists thought that electrical engineering was largely chemistry on account of the storage batteries, the galvanic cells, and the electrochemical processes which formed an important part of the electrical operations in the early history of applied electricity. Others asserted that, since mechanical engineering attended to the design and the construction of electromagnetic generators and to the power plant which furnished the driving power, electrical engineering was, therefore, largely mechanical engineering.

Crocker and I maintained that there is an electrical science which is the real soul of electrical engineering, and that every other abstract science or its application was an incident only in electrical engineering. We won out in spite of the fact that at other institutions of higher learning in the United States electrical engineering was taught in the departments of physics or of mechanical engineering. But it was not an easy matter in those days to persuade people that the electrical science with its applications was then, or that it ever would be, big enough to need a department of its own, like, for instance, civil engineering.

A small brick shed, a temporary structure, had been built at Columbia College to accommodate the new department. The students called it the “cowshed,” and the boy who invented the name did not indulge in any stretching of his imagination. It certainly looked like a cowshed. The laboratory equipment consisted of a dynamo, a motor, and an alternator, with some so-called practical measuring instruments. When I compared the facilities of the new “Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia College” with that of the Polytechnic School in Berlin, I felt somewhat humbled, but not discouraged. I said to Crocker: “Our guns are small and few in number; the men behind the guns will have to expand much beyond their present size if this department is to make any impression upon the electrical art.” “Pupin,” said Crocker, “you have no idea how rapidly a young fellow grows when he tries to teach a new subject to poorly prepared beginners.”

Crocker and I were given to understand that any additional equipment during the first year would have to be bought from contributions outside of the university. We raised some money by giving a course of twelve popular lectures for which we charged ten dollars per person. Each lecture lasted two hours; we were somewhat dubious about their quality, and so we provided a generous quantity. We raised in this manner three hundred dollars and bought additional equipment, but no two young scientists ever worked harder to earn three hundred dollars. The experience, however, was worth many times that amount. Our audience consisted of business men and lawyers, who were either interested in the electrical industries, or expected to become interested. They had hardly any previous scientific training. It took much judgment and skill to talk science to these people without shooting much above their heads. Every one of them believed that the electrical science was in its infancy, and that most of its useful applications were obtained empirically by a rule of thumb. When we told them that the electrical science was one of the most exact of all physical sciences, some shook their heads and exhibited considerable scepticism. One of them asked me: “Doctor, do you know what electricity is?” “No,” said I, and he added another question: “Then how can you have an exact science of electricity when you do not even know what electricity is?” To this I retorted: “Do you know what matter is? Of course you do not, nor does anybody else know it, and yet who will deny that there are exact sciences relating to material things? Do you deny that astronomy is an exact science?” It is a difficult thing to make unscientific people understand that science studies first and foremost the _activities of things and not their ultimate nature_.

In that first course of public lectures I found it necessary to devote much of my exposition to the correction of erroneous notions lodged in the minds of my audience. When I told that audience that no electrical generator generates electricity, because electricity was made by God and, according to Faraday, its quantity in the universe is constant, and that for every positive charge there is an equal negative one, most members of my audience were inclined to think that I was talking metaphysics. “Then what does it generate?” asked one of my hearers. I answered: “It generates motion of electricity, and by that motion it furnishes us with means of doing useful work like telegraphy, telephony, and electrical lighting.” Then I added: “The electrical science studies the forces which make electricity move against the reactions of the bodies through which it moves; in the overcoming of these reactions the moving electricity does useful work.” Illustrations from dynamics of material bodies did not help very much, because my audience had hardly any knowledge of even the elements of Newton’s great work, although Newton considered these elements obvious truths. All they knew about Newton was that he had “discovered gravitation.” When I told them that Newton had discovered the law of gravitational action and not gravitation itself, they thought that I was splitting hairs. I was never quite sure that those good people had carried away much knowledge from my lectures, but I was quite sure that they had left much knowledge with me. In trying to straighten out their notions I straightened out my own very considerably. Crocker was right when he said: “You have no idea how rapidly a young fellow grows when he tries to teach a new subject to poorly prepared beginners.” That was the real profit from our first course of public lectures.

Every cultured person is expected to have an intelligent view of literature, of the fine arts, and of the social sciences, which is as it should be. But who has ever thought of suggesting that culture demands an intelligent view of the primary concepts in fundamental sciences? If cultured people had it, there would be no need to renew periodically the tiresome topic of the alleged clash between science and religion, and there would be much more straight thinking about things in general. Every child in the public schools should be made perfectly familiar with the simple experiments which illustrate the fundamental elements of Newton’s divine philosophy, as Milton calls science. Barnard, Joseph Henry, Andrew White, and the other leaders of scientific thought in the United States, who started the great movement in favor of higher scientific research and of a better scientific education, had a difficult up-hill pull, because people in high places lacked an intelligent view of science. A famous lawyer, a trustee of a great educational institution, looked surprised when I told him, over thirty years ago, that one cannot teach science without laboratories both for the elementary and for the advanced instruction. He actually believed that graduate schools in science needed only a lot of blackboards, chalk, and sponges, and a lecturer who could prepare his lectures by reading books. He believed what he thought would suit him best, namely, that a university should be built on the top of a heap of chalk, sponges, and books. These instrumentalities are cheaper than laboratories, and that appeals to many university trustees. The teacher who can lecture from books and not from his experience in the laboratory is also much cheaper. But heaven help the country which trusts its destiny to cheap men operating with cheap instrumentalities. I gave that trustee a lecture by reciting the sermon which Tyndall preached in the “Summary and Conclusions” of his famous lectures of 1872-1873. I was bold enough to deliver several of these lectures to men in high places. Some liked them and some did not, but they all agreed that I had my own opinions upon the subject and was not afraid to express them.

The American Institute of Electrical Engineers had heard of my somewhat novel opinions regarding the teaching of the electrical science in its bearing upon electrical engineering, and it invited me to give an address upon the subject at its annual meeting in Boston, in the summer of 1890. The address was entitled “Practical Aspects of the Alternating Current Theory.” It was a eulogy of the electrical science, and particularly of Faraday, Maxwell, and Joseph Henry on the purely scientific side, and of the technical men who were developing the system of electrical power distribution by alternating electrical forces. I noticed that my audience was divided into two distinct groups; one group was cordial and appreciative, but the other was as cold as ice. The famous electrical engineer and inventor, Elihu Thomson, was in the friendly group, and he looked me up after the address and congratulated me cordially. That was a great encouragement and I felt happy. Another man, a well-known physicist and engineer, also looked me up, and asked me whether I really expected that students of electrical engineering could ever be trusted to swallow and digest all the mathematical stuff which I had presented in my address. The “mathematical stuff” to which he referred was a very elementary theoretical illustration. I thought of my chums, the tripos youngsters at Cambridge, and of their wonderful capacity for swallowing and digesting “mathematical stuff,” but said nothing; the man who was addressing me was one of those people who had a small opinion of the capacity and willingness of our American boys to “swallow and digest” just as much “mathematical stuff” as their English cousins do.

A short time prior to my return to Columbia College, in 1889, a bitter polemic had been carried on in the New York newspapers concerning the two methods of electrical power distribution, the _direct_ and the _alternating_ current method. The New York interests favored the first, and another group, including the Westinghouse Company, supported the alternating current method. The opponents of the latter method called it the “deadly alternating current,” and did their best to discredit it. They actually succeeded, I was told, in persuading the State authorities to install an alternating current machine at the Sing Sing prison, to be used in electrocution. When in my address at Boston I recited my eulogy of the alternating current system I did not know of this bitter polemic, but when I heard of it I understood the chilliness among a part of my audience.

In the following autumn I was made to understand that my address in Boston had made a bad impression, and that it had offended the feelings of some _big_ men who were interested in the electrical industries. I could not help seeing the glaring hint that the new “Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia College” was to suffer from the fact that one of its two instructors was accused of an unpardonable “electrical heresy.” The great and mighty person who broached this matter to me suggested that perhaps the easiest way out of this difficulty was my resignation. “Very well,” said I, “I will certainly resign if the trustees of Columbia College, who appointed me, find me guilty of a scientific heresy.” The trustees never heard of this incident, but my colleague Crocker did, and he said in his characteristic manner: “There are many persons to-day who would not hesitate to burn the witch of Salem, but no persons of that kind are on the board of trustees of Columbia College.” Crocker was a Cape Cod man and he had a very soft spot for the witch of Salem.

The notion among many captains of industry that the electrical science was in its infancy, and that it worked by the rule of thumb, made it possible to launch an opposition of that kind against the introduction of the alternating current system of electrical distribution of power. Tesla’s alternating current motor and Bradley’s rotary transformer for changing alternating currents into direct were available at that time. The electrical art was ready then to do many of the things which it is doing to-day so well, if it had not been for the opposition of people who were afraid that they would have to scrap some of their direct current apparatus and the plants for manufacturing it, if the alternating current system received any support. A most un-American mental attitude! It was clear to every impartial and intelligent expert that the two systems supplemented each other in a most admirable manner, and that the advancement of one would also advance the other. Men like Elihu Thomson and my colleague Crocker knew that, but ignorance and false notions prevailed in the early nineties, because the captains of electrical industries paid small attention to highly trained electrical scientists. That explains why in those days the barbarous steel cables were still employed to drag cars along Third Avenue, New York, and why in 1893 I saw the preparatory work on Columbus Avenue, New York, for installing additional barbarous steel ropes to drag street-cars. But, fortunately, electrical traction came to the rescue of Columbus Avenue.

During the summer of 1893 I had the good fortune to meet, quite often, William Barclay Parsons, the distinguished engineer, the future builder of the first New York subway, and to-day the distinguished chairman of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University. He passed the summer vacation at Atlantic Highlands, and I at Monmouth Beach, and we used the same steamboat in our occasional trips to New York. His head was full of schemes for the solution of the New York rapid-transit problem, but I observed that his ideas were not quite clear on the question of the electrical power transmission to be employed. A very few years later his ideas had cleared wonderfully. He had visited Budapest in 1894 and had seen there surface cars operated electrically and most satisfactorily by an underground trolley. It was a most instructive object-lesson, but how humiliating it was to the engineering pride of the great United States to consult little Hungary in electrical engineering! The electrical power transmission system employed to-day in the New York subways is practically the same which had been proposed to and accepted by Parsons, the chief engineer, not so many years after our trips to New York, in 1893; it is the electrical power transmission consisting of a combination of the alternating and direct current systems. No fundamentally novel methods were employed which did not exist at the time when the alternating current machine was installed at Sing Sing for the purpose of electrocuting people by the “deadly alternating current.” In less than five years a radical change in popular notions had taken place about a matter which was well understood from the very first by men of higher scientific training, like Stillwell, the chief engineer of the Niagara Power Company, and Sprague, the well-known pioneer in electrical traction, the inventor of the multiple unit system, without which our subway would be practicably impossible.

Four historical events, very important in the annals of the electrical science in the United States, had happened in rapid succession between 1890 and 1894. The first was the successful electrical transmission of power between Lauffen and Frankfurt, in Germany, in 1891; it employed the alternating current system. The second was the decision of the Niagara Falls Power and Construction Company to employ the alternating current system for the transmission of its electrical power; Professor Henry Augustus Rowland, of Johns Hopkins University, as consulting expert of the company, favored this system; another consulting scientific expert, the famous Lord Kelvin, favored the direct current system. The third historical event was the consolidation of the Edison General Electric Company with the Thomson-Houston Company of Lynn, Massachusetts. This consolidation meant the end of the opposition to the alternating current system on the part of people who were most influential in the electrical industries. No such opposition could exist in an electrical corporation where Elihu Thomson’s expert opinion had any weight. The fourth historical event was the Electrical Congress at the World Exposition in Chicago, in 1893. Helmholtz came over as an official delegate of the German Empire, and was elected honorary president of the congress. The subjects discussed at that congress, and the men who discussed them, showed that the electrical science was not in its infancy, and that electrical things were not done by the rule of thumb.

Once I asked Professor Rowland whether anybody had ever suggested to him resigning from Johns Hopkins University on the ground that in favoring the alternating current system for the Niagara Falls Power Transmission plant he had made himself liable to a charge of heresy. “Heresy?” said he; “I thought that my heresy was worth a big fee, and when the company attempted to cut it down the courts sustained my claim.” An interesting bit of history is attached to this. When the Niagara Power and Construction Company objected to the size of the fee which Rowland charged for his services as scientific adviser, and asked for a reduction, the matter was referred to the court. During Rowland’s cross-examination the defendant’s lawyer, the late Joseph Choate, asked him the question: “Who, in your opinion, is the greatest physicist in the United States?” Rowland answered without a moment’s hesitation: “I am.” The judge smiled, but agreed with the witness, and his agreement was in harmony with the opinion of all scientific men. Rowland justified his apparently egotistical answer by the fact that as a witness on the stand he was under oath to speak the truth; he certainly spoke the truth when he testified that he was the leading physicist in the United States.

Rowland’s interest in the electrical science and its technical applications helped much to dissipate the notion, entertained by many, that it was empirical and still in its infancy. Bogus inventors always encouraged this superstition. The attention which Rowland and his former pupil, the late Doctor Louis Duncan, devoted to electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins University helped much to raise the status of electrical engineering. When the new General Electric Company was organized by the consolidation of the Edison General Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Company, Elihu Thomson became the chief scientific adviser of the new corporation, and its highest court of appeals in scientific matters. I remember telling my colleague, Crocker, that if the Thomson-Houston Company had contributed nothing else than Elihu Thomson to the new corporation it would have contributed more than enough. Thomson, in my opinion, was the American Siemens, and Rowland was the American Helmholtz, of the new era in the history of American industries--the era of close co-operation between abstract science and engineering. With these two men among the leaders of the electrical science and the electrical industry in the United States, the senseless opposition to the alternating current system of power distribution began to wane. It vanished quickly after the Electrical Congress of 1893. The first visible result of the co-operation between abstract science and the technical arts was the splendid power plant at Niagara Falls, and later the electrical power distribution system in the New York subways, in which the alternating and the direct current systems supplemented each other most admirably.

First Director of the Physics Laboratory of Johns
Hopkins University]

The scientific spirit of Rowland’s laboratory and lecture-room was felt everywhere in the electrical industries; it was felt also in our educational institutions. His and his students’ researches in solar spectra and in other problems of higher physics made that spirit the dominating influence among the rising generation of physical science in America. It was universally acknowledged that Johns Hopkins was a real university. The intellectual movement in favor of higher scientific research, first inaugurated by Joseph Henry, President Barnard of Columbia College, and Doctor John William Draper, in the early seventies, was marching on steadily under the leadership of Rowland when I started my academic career at Columbia, thirty-four years ago, and he led on like a “doughty knight of Troy,” as Maxwell used to call him. It was the spirit of Johns Hopkins which inspired the generation of the early nineties in its encouragement of the movement for the development of the American university. Some enthusiasts at Columbia College went even so far as to advocate the abolition of the college curriculum and the substitution of a Columbia University for Columbia College; I was not among these enthusiasts, because I knew only too well the historical value of Columbia College and of other American colleges. What would the University of Cambridge be without its ancient colleges? College lays the foundation for higher citizenship; the university lays the foundation for higher learning.

JAMES CLERK MAXWELL (1831-1879)

First Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge
University]

Speaking for physical sciences I can say that in those days there was no lack of trained scientists who could easily have extended the work of the American college, and added to it a field of advanced work resembling closely the activity of the European universities. Most of these men had received their higher academic training in European universities, and quite a number of them came from Johns Hopkins. But there were two obstacles: first, lack of experimental-research facilities; second, lack of leisure for scientific research. Rowland and his followers recognized the existence of these obstacles, and demanded reform. Most of the energy of the teachers of physical sciences was consumed in the lecture-room; they were pedagogues, “pouring information into passive recipients,” as Barnard described it. My own case was a typical one. How could I do any research as long as I had at my disposal a dynamo, a motor, an alternator, and a few crude measuring instruments only, all intended to be used every day for the instruction of electrical-engineering students? When the professor of engineering died, in the summer of 1891, a part of his work, theory of heat and hydraulics, was assigned to me. The professor of dynamics died a little later, and his work also was transferred to me. I was to carry the additional load of lecture-room work temporarily, but was relieved from it, in part only, after several years. As a reward my title was advanced to adjunct professor, with an advance of salary to two thousand five hundred dollars per annum. But in return for this _royal_ salary I had to lecture three to four hours each forenoon, and help in the electrical laboratory instruction in the afternoons. While this pedagogic load was on my back scientific research could not be seriously thought of. My young colleagues in other colleges were similarly situated. This overloading of young scientists with pedagogic work threatened to stunt, and often did stunt, their growth and also the growth of the rising American university. “Let chairs be founded, sufficiently but not luxuriously endowed, which shall have original research for their main object and ambition,” was the historic warning which Tyndall addressed to the American people in 1873, but in 1893 there was little evidence that it was heeded anywhere outside of Johns Hopkins University. But there they had Rowland and a number of other stars of the first magnitude who had succeeded Joseph Henry, Barnard, and Draper as leaders of the great movement in favor of higher scientific research. In 1883 Rowland delivered a memorable address as vice-president of one of the sections of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was entitled, “A Plea for Pure Science,” and described the spirit not only of Johns Hopkins of those days but also of all friends of higher learning in science. That spirit was advocated here by Tyndall in 1872-1873, and under Rowland’s leadership it was bound to win our battle for higher ideals in science. The people of the United States owe a great debt of gratitude to Johns Hopkins for the leadership in that great movement which, as we see to-day, has produced a most remarkable intellectual advancement in this country. Nearly thirty years ago I heard Rowland say in a public address: “They always say in Baltimore that no man in that city should die without leaving something to Johns Hopkins.” When he said it he knew that Johns Hopkins was very poor. It is poorer to-day than ever, and no rich man in the United States should die without leaving something to Johns Hopkins, the pioneer university of the United States.

Rowland said once that lack of experimental facilities and of time was not a valid excuse for neglecting entirely scientific research. I agreed with that opinion; neglect breeds indifference, and indifference degenerates into atrophy of the spirit of inquiry. The alternating current machine of the electrical engineering laboratory at Columbia was free in the evenings, and so was my time; that is, if my wife should not object, and, being a noble and unselfish woman, she did not object. With the assistance of several enthusiastic students, among them Gano Dunn, to-day one of the most distinguished engineers in the United States, I started investigating the passage of electricity through various gases at low pressures, and published two papers in the _American Journal of Science_. I soon discovered that most of my results had been anticipated by Professor J. J. Thomson, of Cambridge, who, in all probability, had received his inspiration from the same source from which I had received mine. He not only had anticipated me but, moreover, he showed a much better grasp of the subject than I had, and had much better experimental facilities. I decided to leave the field to him, and to watch his beautiful work from the outside. It was a wise decision, because it prepared me to understand the epoch-making discoveries in this field which were soon to be announced, one in Germany and one in France. I turned my attention to another field.

I must mention, however, one of the results which Thomson had not anticipated and which created quite an impression among astronomers. I noticed a peculiar appearance in the electrical discharge proceeding from a small metal sphere which was located in the centre of a large glass sphere containing air at low pressure. The discharges looked very much like the luminous corona of the sun which astronomers observe during eclipses, and which was always a mysterious puzzle in solar physics. Pasting a tin-foil disk on the glass sphere, so as to hide the metal sphere and see only the discharge proceeding from it, I photographed the appearance of the discharge and obtained the pictures given opposite page 294. The resemblance of these photographs to those of the two types of the solar corona is most striking. This is what I said about it at that time:

“The bearing which these experimental results may have upon the theory of the solar corona I prefer to leave to others to decide. That they may prove a suggestive guide in the study of solar phenomena seems not unreasonable to expect.”

Photographed by the Lick Observatory Expedition
to Australia]

In a communication read later before the New York Academy of Sciences I was much bolder, having previously discussed the subject with my friends at Johns Hopkins and with the late Professor Young, the famous astronomer at Princeton. I soon found myself advocating strongly the electromagnetic theory of solar phenomena. A German professor, Ebert by name, a well-known authority on electrical discharges in gases, took me very seriously indeed, which was very flattering, but he claimed priority. I had no difficulty in establishing my priority through the columns of _Astronomy and Astro-Physics_, one of whose editors was George Ellery Hale, to-day the distinguished director of Mount Wilson Observatory. I was indeed fortunate to make his acquaintance during that period when both he and I were very young men. His influence prevented me from running wild with my electromagnetic theory of solar phenomena. Thanks to the splendid astro-physical researches at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California under Doctor Hale’s direction, we know to-day that enormous electrical currents circulate on the surface of the sun, and we know also from other researches that negative electricity is shot out from all hot bodies, even from those not nearly as hot as the sun, and that the solar corona is, in all probability, closely related to this electrical activity on the sun.