These
points will, however, be more fully treated of in the second part
of this paper.' Jenkin had in fact made a determination at
Birkenhead of the specific inductive capacity of gutta-percha, or
of the gutta-percha and Chatterton's compound constituting the
insulation of the cable, on which he experimented. This was the
very first true measurement of the specific inductive capacity of a
dielectric which had been made after the discovery by Faraday of
the existence of the property, and his primitive measurement of it
for the three substances, glass, shellac, and sulphur; and at the
time when Jenkin made his measurements the existence of specific
inductive capacity was either unknown, or ignored, or denied, by
almost all the scientific authorities of the day.
The original determination of the microfarad, brought out under the
auspices of the British Association Committee on Electrical
Standards, is due to experimental work by Jenkin, described in a
paper, 'Experiments on Capacity,' constituting No. IV. of the
appendix to the Report presented by the Committee to the Dundee
Meeting of 1867.
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