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25. Morgan’s Experiment. No discharge in High Vacua. Wiedemann, vol. 2. Phil. Trans., 1875, vol. 75.—He was led to believe by an experiment, that when the vacuum is sufficiently perfect, no electromotive force could drive the spark from one terminal to the other, however close together they may be. ssss1. Details of Morgan’s Experiments were as follows, given roughly in his own words:—A mercurial gauge about fifteen inches long, carefully and accurately boiled till every particle of air was expelled from the inside, was coated with tinfoil five inches down from its sealed end, and being inverted into mercury through a perforation in the brass cap which covered the mouth of the cistern, the whole was cemented together and the air was exhausted from the inside of the cistern, through a valve in the brass cap, which, producing a perfect vacuum in the gauge, formed an instrument peculiarly well adapted for experiments of this kind. Things being thus adjusted (a small wire having been previously fixed on the inside of the cistern, to form a communication between the brass cap and the mercury, into which the gauge was inverted), the coated end was applied to the conductor of an electrical machine, and notwithstanding every effort, neither the smallest ray of light nor the slightest charge could ever be procured in this exhausted gauge.