Brown and White Vol. 4 no. 46

              dual track and field meet lehigh has been invited by the new york university to take part in a dual track and field meet to be held on ohio field university heights new york city on either the 15th or 22d of may the new york university will assume entire control of the games and will allow lehigh a guarantee sufficient to cover all expenses prizes which will be either medals or ribbon badges will be awarded to the winners of first second and third places in each event and ?. banner to the team which wins the most points mr smith manager of the track team has been given permission by the committee on athletics to accept the invitation arrange ments as to date number of events and various other matters bearing on the meet have not yet been completed dr macfarlane's lec ture on thusday evening last dr macfarlane delivered a paper be fore the electrical engineering society on " the real path of the electric current in a conductor dr macfarlane told how he had read when a student the idea of a french physicist that some day speech would be transmitted by electricity and how the other physicists of the time laughed at him for such wild and foolish ideas in considering this subject said dr macfarlane it must be patent to all that the molecules of copper in the conductor can scarcely be made to vibrate so as to transmit energy with the velocity of light to find the medium of propogation we must look elsewhere and we naturally turn to that subtle sub stance ether which pervades the whole material world it is thought and with good reason that the ether in the insulating material is the conducting medium although the ether in the conductor prob ably aids in the transmission early in this century physicists founded on coulomb's experiments a theory of electricity which was that two charges of electricity ex erted a certain torce on each other which was proportional to their product and inversely propor tional to the square of the distance between them no attention how ever was paid at this time as to how these quantities affected each other faraday near the middle of the century tried to imagine how this force was transmitted between the bodies and suggested the idea of lines of force some thought that faraday's idea was contradictory to what mathematics had clearly proven but at this point maxwell stepped in and showed to the world that these two ideas representing theory and practice were not contradictory but supplemental he clearly demonstrated that the ether be tween two charged bodies was in a state of strain he likewise proved that if these charges could be made oscillatory that waves would be produced having the velocity of light hertz eight years ago proved the actual reality of these electro-magnetic waves this the ory if we may so call it of the transmission of electric energy through the ether now rests on experimental proof as well as mathematical analysis dr macfarlane then referred to sketches which he had drawn to show the nature of these strains in the ether in different kinds of cir cuits starting with the strains caused by static charges of elec tricity on conductors he proceeded to the more complex strains caused in the ether by current electricity carefully explaining each step in the process as fully as was possible without entering deeply into a lehigh university south bethlehem pa monday apkil 5 1897 vol iv no 46 the brown and white mathematical discussion of the sub ject upon these principles he explained clearly and logically all the phenomena of dynamic electri city dr macfarlane's paper was in substance that recently delivered by drs houston and kennelly be fore the american philosophical society the lucid presentation of the subject together with the interest naturally inherent in it made the paper one of unusual interest calendar tuesday april 6 — meeting of mathematical club physical laboratory 7 p m prof thayer's lecture on john milton vine street school house at 8 p m meeting of christian asso ciation 7 p m wednesday april 7 meeting of senior class christmas hall 12.30 p.m gun club shoot at athletic field eegular business meeting of gun club phi gamma delta house 7.30 p;m thursday april 8 — junior me chanicals shop visit to new york city saturday april 10 — baseball eutgers at athletic field tuesday april 13 — meeting of civil engineering society 7 p m wednesday april 14 — baseball university of georgetown at washington easter holidays begin thursday april 15 — baseball university of virginia at charlottesville ya friday april 16 charlotte a a at charlotte n c saturday april 17 university of n c at chapel hill n c monday april 19 — university of n c at winston salern n c tuesday april 20 — american catholic university at wash ington wednesday april 21 — easter holidays end m e section on wednesday evening gallar do 97 read an interesting paper before the m e section of the engineering society entitled com pressed air and its application to street eailway in the opening remarks gallar do referred to the great number of industries which are finding that compressed air is a faithful and efficient source of power the principal objections to the use of compressed air small effi ciency and great dangers in its use are fast disappearing with the later improvements the losses in efficiency are less while the dan gers have been greatly magnified the question of economics has done more for the advance of the use of compressed air than any other cause the use of compressed air for street car propulsion is no longer a theory for in new york city a car line using compressed air as motive power has been in success ful operation for the past six months the two systems of applying the compressed air to cars now in use in new york were describ ed with the aid of sketches by gallardo he also made the nec essary calculations for the power necessary to compress the air and the cost of compression visit of appropria tions committee at the invitation of the presi dent and board of trustees of the university and of the trustees of st luke's hospital south bethle hem the members of the appropri ations committee of the house of representatives of the state of pennsylvania made a special visit to lehigh university and st luke's hospital on thursday morn ing the party came from harris burg on a special train and ar rived about noon they were met by president drown and members of the board of trustees of the university and the hospital after visiting the hospital the party lunched in the gymnasium and then made a thorough inspec tion of the grounds and buildings of the university they were offered every opportunity to make a full and complete examination in detail of the various departments of the university later in the day they visited the bethlehem iron works the fol lowing members and officials of the legislature were of the party : w t marshall chairman appropria tions committee ; p m lytle w o smith jacob wenk j f maple b j focht wm f stew art j b hammond a t connell j mcwhinney webster c weiss frank mclain c m kerr a l martin jerry weiler m j len non g w mcnees john eeibel e p gould b jennings w h tipton david west ward e bliss p m spear john a gil more s m williams p m bro phy a j pitcairn george ehoads e w purshall w h leh j h marshall jas scofield louis piol let,harper seidle,john mcgaughey ebenezer adams 0 f chidsey c b noblitt a g seyfert c w herman before leaving each of the visi tors was handed a pamphlet con taining a brief history and descrip of the university after the legislators had com pleted their visit to the iron works they boarded the special train leaving south bethlehem at 4 o'clock and returned to harris burg notices on saturday april 10 the senior electricals accompanied by dr macfarlane will leave south bethlehem on a shop visit to ni agara falls during the trip they will visit the power house at the falls the works of pittsburghßeduc tion company the corborundu'm works the calcium carbide works ; the lighting station for the town the works of the hydraulic com any the cliff paper mills the transmission plant and the buffalo street railway power house the party will leave bethlehem on sat urday at 10.45 a m and on the return trip will leave buffalo tues day at 8.45 p m ■ the regular meeting of the mathematical club will be held in the physical laboratory on tues day evening at 7 o'clock loom is 97 will read a paper on " linear equations all are invited to at tend the preliminary debates of the agora will end this week when the forum has completed theirs also the final debate between the two will take place this contest will decide the choice of men for the annual debate with lafayette at easton in may college lecture there will be a general college lecture on thursday night april 8 the lecturer will be mr tim othy d wight sprague,of the massa chusetts institute of technology mr sprague is a prominent electri cal engineer and has for the past five years been interested in the application of electricity to mining he brings with him a large num ber of lantern slides with which to illustrate his lecture the lecture will be given as usual in the large lecture room of the physical la boratory under the auspices of the electrical engineering society at 8 o'clock