Word: volta
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Curious about international white slave traffic, Author Londres once lived with the traffickers, about whom he wrote The Road to Buenos Aires. His latest excursion-to Africa, through French Sudan, the High Volta, the Ivory Coast, Togoland, Dahomey, the Congo-disclosed a black slave traffic. The native African, says he, is a "banana engine" making the roads of a continent at the expense of his life. He may work a month on banana fuel, then find himself owing eleven francs because of huge taxes. Other Londres observations: 1) in French Africa a white man who strikes a black gets fined...
...Last week was the death centenary of the man who first understood that electricity flows in currents measurable in pressure units. "Volts" and "voltage" were the work of Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, Italy. His compatriot and contemporary, Luigi Galvani of Bologna, observing the spasms caused in dead frogs' muscles by contact with mixed metals and moisture had deduced that the muscles contained electricity. Volta examined the theory of "galvanism" and traced electricity, not to the muscles, but to the mixed metals and moisture. He piled pairs of silver and zinc...
Besides Lavoisier, Priestley knew Volta (the Italian electrical pioneer), James Watt, Erasmus Darwin. Benjamin Franklin. He followed his sons to the U. S. in 1794, died at Northumberland...