3-065-676 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lecture at the Charterhouse on Stephen Gray's discoveries in electricity, 1874. 'The subject of Dr. B. W. Richardson's lecture was the scientific researches of Stephen Gray, F.R.S., who was one of the Brethren of the Charterhouse from 1719 to 1735-6. He was one of the most remarkable men of the last century, and did a great deal for the promotion of electrical science in its early days. Dr. Richardson has devoted much time to collecting the works of Gray, and has rescued his name from comparative obscurity to place him in a high rank among the benefactors of mankind... Gray discovered that electricity could be communicated from certain substances to other substances...Dr. Richardson's lecture was purely a series of experimental demonstrations. It was a mere repetition of the processes of investigation performed by Stephen Gray himself. All these experiments were carried on with the most simple apparatus...Our Illustration shows how an experiment was made by Gray with a soap bubble. A bubble is blown from a common pipe, the pipe is insulated by a silk band, and when an excited glass tube is brought near the pipe, the bubble has an electric attraction'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.