An account of some experiments on the torpedo

Abstract

The author, after noticing the peculiarities discovered by Walsh in the electricity of the Torpedo, and the opinion of Cavendish, that it resembles the action of an electrical battery weakly charged, adverts to the conjecture of Volta, who considered it as similar to that of the galvanic pile. Being on the coast of the Mediterranean in 1814 and 1815, the author, desirous of ascertaining the justness of Volta’s comparison, passed the shocks given by living torpedos through the interrupted circuit made by silver wire through water, but could not perceive the slightest decomposition of that fluid; the same shocks made to pass through a fine silver wire, less than one thousandth of an inch in diameter, did not produce ignition. Volta, to whom the author communicated the results of these experiments, considered the conditions of the organs of the torpedo to be best represented by a pile, of which the fluid substance was a very imperfect conductor, such as honey, and which, though it communicated weak shocks, yet did not decompose water. The author also ascertained that the electrical shocks of the torpedo, even when powerful, produced no sensible effect on an extremely delicate magnetic electrometer. He explains these negative results by supposing that the motion of the electricity in the torpedinal organ is in no measurable time, and wants that continuity of current requisite for the production of magnetic effects.