Electricity

It is impo ible in the existing state of human knowledge to give a satisfactory definition of electricity. The views of various authorities are given here to afford a basis for arriving at the general consensus of electricians. We have as yet no conception of electricity apart from the electrified body; we have no experience of its independent existence. (J. E. H. Gordon.) What is Electricity? We do not know, and for practical purposes it is not nece ary that we should know. (Sydney F. Walker.) Electricity … is one of those hidden and mysterious powers of nature which has thus become known to us through the medium of effects. (Weale's Dictionary of Terms.) This word Electricity is used to expre more particularly the cause, which even today remains unknown, of the phenomena that we are about to explain. (Amédée Guillemin.) 207  STANDARD ELECTRICAL DICTIONARY. Electricity is a powerful physical agent which manifests itself mainly by attractions and repulsions, but also by luminous and heating effects, by violent commotions, by chemical decompositions, and many other phenomena. Unlike gravity, it is not inherent in bodies, but it is evoked in them by a variety of causes … (Ganot's Physics.) Electricity and magnetism are not forms of energy; neither are they forms of matter. They may, perhaps, be provisionally defined as properties or conditions of matter; but whether this matter be the ordinary matter, or whether it be, on the other hand, that all-pervading ether by which ordinary matter is surrounded, is a question which has been under discu ion, and which now may be fairly held to be settled in favor of the latter view. (Daniell's Physics.) The name used in connection with an extensive and important cla of phenomena, and usually denoting the unknown cause of the phenomena or the science that treats of them. (Imperial Dictionary.) Electricity... is the imponderable physical agent, cause, force or the molecular movement, by which, under certain conditions, certain phenomena, chiefly those of attraction and repulsion,... are produced. (John Angell.) It has been suggested that if anything can rightly be called "electricity," this must be the ether itself; and that all electrical and magnetic phenomena are simply due to changes, strains and motions in the ether. Perhaps negative electrification...means an exce of ether, and positive electrification a defect of ether, as compared with the normal density. (W. Larden.) Electricity is the name given to the supposed agent producing the described condition (i. e. electrification) of bodies. (Fleeming Jenkin.) There are certain bodies which, when warm and dry, acquire by friction, the property of attracting feathers, filaments of silk or indeed any light body towards them. This property is called Electricity, and bodies which po e it are said to be electrified. (Linnaeus Cumming.) What electricity is it is impo ible to say, but for the present it is convenient to look upon it as a kind of invisible something which pervades all bodies. (W. Perren May cock.) What is electricity? No one knows. It seems to be one manifestation of the energy which fills the universe and which appears in a variety of other forms, such as heat, light, magnetism, chemical affinity, mechanical motion, etc. (Park Benjamin.) 208   STANDARD ELECTRICAL DICTIONARY. The theory of electricity adopted throughout these le ons is, that electricity, whatever its true nature, is one, not two; that this Electricity, whatever it may prove to be, is not matter, and is not energy; that it resembles both matter and energy in one respect, however, in that it can neither be created nor destroyed. (Sylvan us P. Thomson.) In Physics a name denoting the cause of an important cla of phenomena of attraction and repulsion, chemical decomposition, etc., or, collectively, these phenomena themselves. (Century Dictionary.) A power in nature, often styled the electric fluid, exhibiting itself, when in disturbed equilibrium or in activity, by a circuit movement, the fact of direction in which involves polarity, or opposition of properties in opposite directions; also, by attraction for many substances, by a law involving attraction between substances of unlike polarity, and repulsion between those of like; by exhibiting accumulated polar tension when the circuit is broken; and by producing heat, light, concu ion, and often chemical changes when the circuit pa es between the poles, or through any imperfectly conducting substance or space. It is evolved in any disturbance of molecular equilibrium, whether from a chemical, physical, or mechanical cause. (Webster's Dictionary.) In point of fact electricity is not a fluid at all, and only in a few of its attributes is it at all comparable to a fluid. Let us rather consider electricity to be a condition into which material substances are thrown...(Slingo & Brooker.) [Transcriber's note: 2008 Dictionary: Phenomena arising from the behavior of electrons and protons caused by the attraction of particles with opposite charges and the repulsion of particles with the same charge.]