Abstract
AT a meeting of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians on Thursday evening, February 10, Prof. G. C. Foster in the chair, a communication was read by Mr. Alex. J. S. Adams upon “Earth Currents-Electric Tides,” in which the author related that, from investigations he had carried on in connection with earth currents since the year 1866, he considered the globe we inhabit as an electrified sphere whose normal electrical condition was liable to disturbance both from within and from without. Starting upon this theory as a basis, and finding from the result of his observations no evidence that the sun exerted sufficient influence to materially disturb the earth's electricity, he undertook a series of systematic observations upon the daily earth-current variations in strength, to elucidate the question, and obtained consecutive observations every quarter of an hour during the interval from April 1 to 21, 1879, with a result that the curves of those observations coincided throughout with the curve of moon-phases for the same period, and clearly indicated that the chief disturbing power was the moon, and that the earth current variations were strictly lunar-diurnal.
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Earth Currents—Electric Tides . Nature 23, 424 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023424a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023424a0