Two years ago I was on a UFO kick. I animated Armstrong’s electrohydrodynamic generator, speculating that it might have been the power source for the disc-type UFOs.
The same generator led to a different form of speculation in a wonderful 1860 book by Rev Sidney. He explores all the known principles and uses of electricity, getting the facts right every time. He smoothly turns each principle into a meditation on the Creator. If you used the book for an experimental course, you’d be praying with wires and solder instead of bread and wine.
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In the ’47-65 period when disc UFOs were reported everywhere, several people saw a disc hovering over a lake or pond, siphoning or pumping large quantities of water. This wouldn’t make sense for an electric motor or even a small nuclear plant. Our long-distance satellites have mini nuke reactors, and they don’t need water.
Taking on water might make sense if the disc is powered by electrohydrodynamics. Observing The Anomaly has been studying the efforts to replicate the discs, mainly carried out at Stanford Research Institute in the ’60s. One line of experimentation was trying EHD, which was first discovered much earlier.
Everything was discovered in England in 1840.
Not 100% true, but pretty damn close. And a lot of the discoveries were in the northern parts of England, not in London.
William Armstrong of Newcastle, born wealthy, trained and worked as a lawyer for a while. His real interest was hydraulics, and he started developing hydraulic tools and cranes for mining. His cranes and safety valves were successful and profitable. While discussing his products with miners, he repeatedly heard a strange phenomenon:
Attention had been turned to the statements of workmen at Cramlington Collieries that, in attempting to adjust the safety valve while steam was blowing off, they had experienced severe electric shocks.
The Wimshurst dry static generator was a popular entertainment in that time and place, so Armstrong recognized what the miners were feeling.
In the Wimshurst, metal strips on the two glass discs constantly pass each other as the discs rotate oppositely. If one strip on the front disc has slightly more negative charge, it will push electrons out of every strip it passes on the back disc. In turn, each of those slightly positive strips on the back disc will cause a slight increase in negativity on each strip it passes on the first disc. Soon all the strips on the front disc are strongly negative compared to the back disc, and the charge will be strong enough to break over and spark at the business end of the conductors.
Since his boilers were already generating strong charges with steam, Armstrong thought he might be able to optimize the effect and branch out into the newly popular fields of electricity and telegraphy. Armstrong varied the structure of the safety valve and came up with an extremely powerful wet static machine.
In this apparatus, steam was made to issue through wooden nozzles, perforated with a crooked passage in order to increase the friction. The collector consisted of a row of spikes placed in the path of the steam jets issuing from the nozzles, and was supported, together with a brass ball which served as a prime conductor, upon a glass pillar.
The same sort of imbalance causes the boiler to become more negative than the spike strip, until the imbalance breaks over and sparks.
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Our Martian friend knows how his charge-vortex machines work, so he is happy to demonstrate the earliest terrestrial version of his familiar engine.
Here he’s stoking the fire.
The tank above the fire is filled with water, generating steam in the usual way.
The entire boiler and pipe system is mounted on glass to insulate it from the ground, and the target is also mounted on a glass column. The target is a brass ball to hold charge, and the spikes concentrate charge on their ends to encourage sparking.
Here he’s turning the valve to let steam into the six outlet pipes, where the steam ‘rubs’ against a dielectric and induces a negative charge in the pipes.
Now the steam is whistling and sparking merrily. Just what he needs to create a charge vortex!
Closeup of the nozzles and steam:
The inside of each nozzle has a ‘flipper’ similar to a pipe organ, developing vortices in the steam. This was part of Armstrong’s design, not my speculation.
His Wet Wimshurst never reached commercial success, probably because the dry machine was much less messy and troublesome. Just turn the crank.
We can imagine a small guild of independent or government-sponsored engineers continuing to perfect the design for aircraft….. Or engineers ‘elsewhere’ perfecting the technique much earlier.
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Now Rev Sidney’s speculation:
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In the Philosophical Magazine for 1840 there are some curious accounts of the electricity of steam as it issued from the safety-valve of a boiler at Sedghill, about six miles from Newcastle.
The engine-man was examining this, and by accident had one hand in the jet of steam while with the other he was adjusting the lever’s weight. A vivid spark, to his surprise, passed between the lever and his hand, and he received a shock. The same thing took place whatever part of the boiler he touched, provided his hand was in the steam. Also he found that if his hand was in the steam, and he touched any person who stood either on the boiler or the brickwork, that person received a shock, but stronger in the former position than in the latter.
The phenomena just described led to a series of most interesting investigations, and to the construction of the great hydro-electric machine, the effects ofwhich have been witnessed with astonishment by thousands at the exhibition of the Polytechnic Institution.
All change of form tends to produce electricity; resinous bodies give it out during melting and cooling; even the cakes of chocolate used for domestic purposes have exhibited it during decrease of temperature. Coagulation and sublimation, are not without their electrical effects, and those accompanying evaporation are of great interest. The electricity and conducting power of the different kinds of flame have also been made the subject of some ingenious experiments.
Thus it seems by this subtle agency pervading all nature, this world of dull and sluggish matter is called into activity, and fitted for the vivid exhibition of the power, wisdom, and providence of its Maker. He “stretched forth the heavens alone ; and spread abroad the earth by himself,”. He had no engine but his word, no pattern but his own infinite counsel, no instruments but those which sprang into energy at his bidding; and at the fiat of his will the rude mass rose into order, and all things separated themselves out of chaos into their proper forms. The discoveries of science plainly show that electricity performs a most momentous part in this glorious work; and this wondrous instrument as much bespeaks the infinity of God in its least development, as in the terrors of the thunderstorm. His omnipotence is an ocean that cannot be fathomed; and to the Christian the streams of comfort which are derived from it can never be exhausted.
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Polistra's Mill 