city.

WILLIAM WATSON

Naturally, the new discoveries made necessary a new nomenclature, new
words and electrical terms being constantly employed by the various
writers of that day. Among these writers was the English scientist
William Watson, who was not only a most prolific writer but a tireless
investigator. Many of the words coined by him are now obsolete, but one
at least, "circuit," still remains in use.

In 1746, a French scientist, Louis Guillaume le Monnier, bad made a
circuit including metal and water by laying a chain half-way around the
edge of a pond, a man at either end holding it. One of these men dipped
his free hand in the water, the other presenting a Leyden jar to a
rod suspended on a cork float on the water, both men receiving a shock
simultaneously. Watson, a year later, attempted the same experiment on
a larger scale. He laid a wire about twelve hundred feet long across
Westminster Bridge over the Thames, bringing the ends to the water's
edge on the opposite banks, a man at one end holding the wire and
touching the water. A second man on the opposite side held the wire and
a Leyden jar; and a third touched the jar with one hand, while with the
other he grasped a wire that extended into the river. In this way they
not only received the shock, but fired alcohol as readily across the
stream as could be done in the laboratory. In this experiment Watson
discovered the superiority of wire over chain as a conductor, rightly
ascribing this superiority to the continuity of the metal.

Watson continued making similar experiments over longer watercourses,
some of them as long as eight thousand feet, and while engaged in making
one of these he made the discovery so essential to later inventions,
that the earth could be used as part of the circuit in the same manner
as bodies of water. Lengthening his wires he continued his experiments
until a circuit of four miles was made, and still the electricity seemed
to traverse the course instantaneously, and with apparently undiminished
force, if the insulation was perfect.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Watson's writings now carried the field of active discovery across
the Atlantic, and for the first time an American scientist appeared--a
scientist who not only rivalled, but excelled, his European
contemporaries. Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, coming into
possession of some of Watson's books, became so interested in the
experiments described in them that he began