Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 52 — page 124: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION had already fought a hot verbal war about the origin of the electric current that Galvani had been able to generate in a frog’s leg. Maybe it was their emotional pre- occupation with this point of pride that prevented their gaining the honour of being the first to make a device for storing current electricity. But either Nallet or Cunzus, eschewing unscientific con- troversy, got down to serious work and produced such a device. From then on scien- tists were able to design experiments that needed the presence of electricity during a significant period of time. Gradually, but with increasing -rate, new discoveries were made that completely revolu- tionised the field of physics. These were not of fundamental theoretical importance until people realised that the elec- tricity did indeed flow, and required time in which to do it. * For a long time it was thought that electricity moved from one point to another instantaneously. This belief was fostered by experiments like that of the good Abbé 123 Nallet who made some o f his monks stand in a ring 1800 yards in circumference hold- ing iron wires which con- nected them in series to a massive collection of Leyden jars. When the Abbé joined the contacts, the monks seemed to jump into the air simultaneously! Actually, of course, the current reached each one a little later than the one before—so little later that the time interval was undetected. But as time went by and physicists were piling up data, all these little misinterpreta- tions were ironed out and the science of electricity marched forward to the incredible complex of facts and formule and instruments that more or less run our modern world. Without the battery our world would be very different. There would be no electric light, no electric trains, no electric toasters and irons and radios and typewriters and motors and lifts and immer- sion heaters. There would be no spark-plug-fed automobiles and no_ television. There would be _ no _ electronic brains and no radar detectors, comicloooks.com