F. Veitkov. Chronicle of Electricity. Second, revised edition. State Energy Publishing House. Moscow–Leningrad. 320 pp. Print run 50,000, price 12 rubles.

The author’s aim in Chronicle of Electricity is, in a belletristic form, to acquaint the reader with the history of the discovery of various electrical phenomena.

It must be noted that there are generally few books on the history of the doctrine of electricity. Therefore F. Veitkov’s book is needed and valuable. It contains an enormous quantity of material, depicting both the most ancient times—

both contemporaneity with its problems of science and technology. In Russian literature this is the first attempt to give the reader a systematic account of the accumulation, over the course of centuries, of facts that constituted the grand path of development of the doctrine of electricity and of its practical application. However, the execution of the author’s plan is far from flawless. In order, even if only “in belles-lettres form,” to outline the path traversed by science, a great and painstaking effort is needed over everything that exists in the literature on this question; and, when considering individual episodes, one must have at hand the historian’s attitude toward the source. The author, evidently, does not do the latter and makes use of second-hand information. Some facts are either not verified or are cited from memory—as a result, distortions and errors have crept into the exposition. For example, I. I. Shuvalov, contrary to F. Veitkov’s assertion (p. 66), never was president of the Academy of Sciences. Or the famous saying of Turgot, characterizing Franklin’s activity—“Eripuit caelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis”—F. Veitkov attributes to “the famous French philosopher and mathematician Jean d’Alembert” (p. 71), although this saying is quite widespread: in eighteenth-century Russian literature it was already more than once—Radishchev translated it as “Having torn from heaven the thunderbolt and the scepter from the hands of kings”—and in encyclopedias there is an exact reference to its author.

The chief shortcomings of the book under review lie, unfortunately, not only in these inaccuracies. Having chosen the style of an artistic narrative, the author, of course, may endow the heroes of his tale with any features he likes, devise any setting in which they are to act; but such “liberties” must, at least in part, be based on real historical traits that have come down to us, and not enter into direct contradiction with them. One should not, therefore, have been carried away by the pictorial quality of the description of Thales of Miletus, about whom extremely little is known. It is hardly correct that F. Veitkov permits the idea and dwellings, friends, pupils, clothing they wore (the author even knows their names), and the like. Perhaps one may admit that Thales conducted his experiments at night, in secret (the chapter devoted to him is indeed called “Under Cover of Night”), but it is inadmissible to assert that Thales observed the phenomenon of a quiet discharge, which became known only more than twenty centuries after the death of the ancient scholar.

The account of Gilbert’s investigations in the field of magnetism is also not free from distortions. It is untrue that the English scholar accidentally became “the father of the science of magnetism and electricity,” led to his original ideas by searches in Arabic manuscripts of the tenth century for instructions on the treatment of the disease from which the ambassador of Ivan the Terrible suffered.

Such a simplified treatment of the history of the emergence of the science of magnetism is unconvincing, and its erroneousness can hardly be justified by the author’s desire for entertainment.

Many other outstanding scholars as well, with whose names whole epochs in the history of the doctrine of electricity and electrical engineering are connected, appear as solitary figures, unrelated to the surrounding world. This false approach to the depiction of historical reality is especially striking in the chapter on the discovery of the magnetic field of an electric current. It is relatively widely known in the literature that the phenomenon of the deflection of a magnetic needle under the influence of a nearby electric current was discovered by Romagnesi long before Ørsted, and some authors even assert that Ørsted could have known of this, since Romagnesi’s discovery was reported not only in the contemporary press, but also in handbooks on galvanism. The question of the connection between electricity and magnetism had been the subject of scholarly attention for half a century before the discovery of the electric current. In this respect the merits of the Russian academician Epinus were exceptional,

which, in a speech delivered in 1758 at the solemn assembly of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, admitted that one may speak not only of the “indissoluble union in the nature of magnetic forces with electrical ones, but also of the complete exact likeness of the two.” F. Veitkov does not mention these merits of Epinus, just as he does not speak in general about how, simultaneously, scholars of different countries, each in his own way, approached the vital question of the close connection between electrical and magnetic phenomena. Entirely simply, as in a fairy tale, “A Happy Day” begins (as the chapter dealing with the beginning of the doctrine of electromagnetism is called), when one of Oersted’s students, during practical exercises, remarked to his professor that “at the moment when the circuit was closed, the magnetic needle deviated to the side.”

We leave to the author’s conscience such modernization as putting the term “closing of the circuit” into the mouth of Oersted’s student, at a time when scholars had not yet used the term “electric current,” calling this phenomenon “electric conflict.” Let us note that not only in the case named does F. Veitkov fail to indicate that the most important discoveries were made not exclusively by one scholar. In speaking of the discovery of Coulomb’s law, the author does not mention Cavendish by a single word. Nor does he mention the name of Richmann, who in a speech prepared for the solemn assembly of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences quite definitely said: “electric matter, set by something in motion around a body, must necessarily surround it at some distance; at a lesser distance from the surface of the body it possesses greater sensitivity, and consequently, with increasing distance the force decreases; this is a definite law, still unknown to us” (Novi commentarii, vol. IV). These words were written approximately a quarter of a century before the publication of the work that immortalized the name of Coulomb.

The name of Joseph Henry is likewise not mentioned when the discussion turns to the discovery of electromagnetic induction. There are not a few such examples in Veitkov’s book.

Veitkov’s book is a reissue, on the title page of which is written: “revised.” Unfortunately, the author did not take into account what new material had appeared on the questions he treats. In the years that passed between the first and second editions of F. Veitkov’s book, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of radio, many documents and materials concerning this field of electrical engineering were published. In particular, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1945 issued a large volume of primary sources illuminating the life and work of A. S. Popov, as well as the attitude of the Russian scientific public and naval circles toward the great invention. The published documents refute the assertion of certain biographers of A. S. Popov that he was denied assistance in every way in the Naval Ministry, and that, when radio began to conquer the world, figures in this department strove to rid themselves of the inventor and secured his departure.

F. Veitkov did not use these documents and underestimated the level, sufficient for that time, of technical culture in the Russian fleet. The following statement by him is incorrect: “To the tsarist admirals who controlled state funds, it was necessary to detach Popov from the supervision of work on introducing wireless telegraphy into the fleet, in order to place an order for apparatus abroad and make much money from it” (p. 276). The matter concerns A. S. Popov’s transfer from the Mine-Officer Classes in Kronstadt to the Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute, to the chair of physics, on the occasion of the election of him as professor. Published documents explain this moment in A. S. Popov’s biography in detail. The entire correspondence is presented between the Ministry of Internal Affairs, under whose jurisdiction the Electrotechnical Institute fell, and the Naval Department, which, as it turns out, was by no means willingly agreeing to the departure of the inventor of radio from the fleet, and

in any case, required guarantees that A. S. Popov would not cease his work in the fleet for a number of years and would continue to direct the introduction of radio.

There are many such shortcomings in F. Veitkov’s book; they occur in almost every one of the fifty-three chapters of his work. The author could have created a good, easily readable work on the history of electrical engineering, if he had treated the facts more carefully and studied more thoroughly the truly extensive materials from which he quite rightly seeks to make the property of a broad circle of readers.

In conclusion, a few words about the illustrations. The book contains an enormous number of drawings, diagrams, blueprints, photographs, and reproductions from old engravings and paintings. However, far from all of them are supplied with the necessary explanations, which considerably diminishes their value.

M. Radovsky