light, interest any one when the new agent, galvanism, was in view? As
well ask one to fix attention on a star while a meteorite blazes across
the sky.

Galvanism was so called precisely as the Roentgen ray was christened at
a later day--as a safe means of begging the question as to the nature of
the phenomena involved. The initial fact in galvanism was the discovery
of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), a physician of Bologna, in 1791, that
by bringing metals in contact with the nerves of a frog's leg violent
muscular contractions are produced. As this simple little experiment led
eventually to the discovery of galvanic electricity and the invention
of the galvanic battery, it may be regarded as the beginning of modern
electricity.

The story is told that Galvani was led to his discovery while preparing
frogs' legs to make a broth for his invalid wife. As the story runs, he
had removed the skins from several frogs' legs, when, happening to touch
the exposed muscles with a scalpel which had lain in close proximity to
an electrical machine, violent muscular action was produced. Impressed
with this phenomenon, he began a series of experiments which finally
resulted in his great discovery. But be this story authentic or not, it
is certain that Galvani experimented for several years upon frogs' legs
suspended upon wires and hooks, until he finally constructed his arc
of two different metals, which, when arranged so that one was placed
in contact with a nerve and the other with a muscle, produced violent
contractions.

These two pieces of metal form the basic principle of the modern
galvanic battery, and led directly to Alessandro Volta's invention
of his "voltaic pile," the immediate ancestor of the modern galvanic
battery. Volta's experiments were carried on at the same time as those
of Galvani, and his invention of his pile followed close upon Galvani's
discovery of the new form of electricity. From these facts the new form
of electricity was sometimes called "galvanic" and sometimes "voltaic"
electricity, but in recent years the term "galvanism" and "galvanic
current" have almost entirely supplanted the use of the term voltaic.

It was Volta who made the report of Galvani's wonderful discovery to
the Royal Society of London, read on January 31, 1793. In this letter he
describes Galvani's experiments in detail and refers to them in glowing
terms of praise. He calls it one of the "most beautiful and important
discoveries," a