William Gilbert, the first electrician.

  • Benjamin Ward Richardson
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: William Gilbert, the first electrician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    From Longman’s Magazine, May 1890.] William Gilbert, the First rpWO or three months ago a few men belonging to the walks of X Science met in the rooms of the Society of Arts, with Sir William Thomson at their head, to found a new club, and to dedi- cate it to the name of a scholar belonging to the Elizabethan days, William Gilbert. The following evening I dined in the company of another club of learned men, one of whom surprised me by ask- ing the question:—‘ Who was the man Gilbert you scientists met to name a club after yesterday ? ’ Do you not know ? ‘ No, really not, we none of us know, or at most know little: tell us all about him.’ To the best of my ability I ventured the task, a task I had also essayed some twenty-two years agone; and during the present month I undertook to tell the same story again to a larger audience at the Ixjndon Institution. As it seems to be a bit of biographical history that is of general interest, I now propose to rejjeat it to the large class of readers who j>eruse the pages of Ix)Ngman’s Magazine. Beyond the mere matter of biography of a remarkable person there is something of special interest connected with the life of the man now under consideration. In studying his life and works we go back to the origin of one of the greatest natural revela- tions that the wit of man has ever unfolded. We go to the begin- nings of electrical discovery, and in fact arrive at the very term by and through which it is known. Such knowledge is useful to men of science of all lands, but to Englishmen it is doubly precious because it conveys the fact that the great revelation of electrical science and art had its birth here in this land, and was the work originally of one of our own early school of scientific scholars. Gilbert by Birth and Education. W illiam Gilbert was bom at Colchester in ^ house which still stands near to the church of the Holy Trinity. The house was A Electrician. y £777 00