“Did you ever think,” said an observing man lately to a reporter of the New York Tribune, “how much loose electricity there is around? It is brought to my notice especially every time I have occasion to ride in a trolley car on a wet day. I have frequently received a stinging shock by taking hold of the brass rail as I swung myself aboard. My feet are wet, you see, and water is so good a conductor that a ground connection is established with myself as part of the circuit. The sensation is quite enough to be disagreeable, I assure you.
“The metal doorsill, too, is another place where the current leaks out. Since I discovered that by personal experience I have often amused myself by watching the people who enter and leave the car. If they step over the wet threshold well and good, but if their feet touch it they are likely to get some of the superfluous power. Then the expression on their faces is ludicrous. Most of them look completely bewildered, as if they didn’t know what had struck them, and I suppose they don’t know for the instant.
“Those are not the only places where there is free electricity, either. In my own office I can get as severe a shock as I could from a battery. In one of the incandescent light fixtures there is a spot where the current escapes in great force. By touching this place with a key, a knife or any bit of metal and resting my other hand on the iron of the steam radiator near by I can take a shock of such power as to burn my hand and make me drop the experiment in a hurry. The other day half a dozen of us joined hands and formed a line between the two places. The man at one end held a key to the fixture and the fellow at the other end laid his hand on the radiator. You would hardly believe how strong the current was. Our hands seems suddenly gripped together and after we let go our fingers tingled for minutes from the effect.
“I have often thought that a computation of the amount of unused electric force there is around us would be interesting. There must be numbers of other places that I have never noticed where it escapes and I suppose there is no doubt that in the aggregate the power wasted would be sufficient to accomplish a tremendous amount of work.”
Ah, the wonders of static electricity. And the stupidity of connecting a faulty light socket to ground through your body. Perhaps household current wasn’t very strong in 1896, but it was possible to fulfill death sentences with electrocution starting in 1890.
Makes you wonder if the speaker wasn’t later a prototypical Darwin Award winner.
The New York Tribune was started and operated by Horace “Go West, young man” Greeley. It was taken over by Whitelaw Reid while Greeley was trying to fulfill his political ambitions.