Morton-Wall: Arbiter (Step 3)

Date 2026-10-08. Inputs: facts.json, claims.md, physicist.md, mathematician.md, contrarian.md, deep/, sites.md, research/. Tags: [read] from a document, [read: page image] from a rendered page, [web] with URL, [memory] with confidence, [computed] my own arithmetic.

Source gap: none for the two articles (Houston 1871, PDF pp.594-596; Wahl 1871, PDF pp.319-323). The text layer is good except for fractions, which the OCR turned into digits (see Corrections). Not read by anyone: Thomson's notebooks and 1922 recollections (APS), Brenni 2015, Susskind 1964 (paywalled), Wills 2007 (blocked), Morton's papers at Stevens. Conclusions about authorship and about "waves" therefore rest on the published record only; the Atherton, Woodbury and Susskind readings are secondary sources.

Reader note: this project is observational and has no equations in either source. Everything quantitative below is a model built by the reviewers. Terms: "quantity" (1870s) means the amount of charge or energy in a spark, judged by eye; "tension" is voltage; capacitance C is charge per volt (Q = CV, stored energy E = 1/2 C V^2).

Corrections to earlier documents (the three reviewers found these; I verified)

1. Wahl's coil figures were misread by OCR (claims.md claim 5, facts.json Wahl entry, deep read, digests). The page images read "44 1/3 miles of wire" (p.320) and "234,100 feet, or about 44 1/4 [1/3] miles ... weighs 44 1/2 pounds" (p.321). The wrong figures are "443 miles", "444 miles", "443 lb" (secondary weight) and "825 sq ft" (condenser, really 325 sq ft; 100 + 100 + 75 + 50 = 325). Primary wire is 0.1655 in, not 0.1635. Check [computed]: 234,100 ft / 5,280 = 44.3 miles. Bare 0.007 in copper: area 3.85e-5 in^2, volume 108 in^3, at 0.321 lb/in^3 = 34.7 lb; silk and paper covering plausibly gives the stated 44 1/2 lb. A 443-mile secondary would weigh about 350 lb, more than the whole 250 lb coil. The corrected contrast is Wahl's actual point: 44 miles of wire for 21 in against App's 150 miles for 29 in. The Step 1 reading ("more wire, more reliable") is inverted. Stale copies to fix: claims.md claim 5; facts.json (Wahl entry summary, key_claims, and the "825 sq ft" and "443 lb" in the summary); digests citing "443 miles"; any primer or entry derived from them.
2. The Leyden jar of Wahl is 1 1/3 square feet and the spark 2 3/4 inches, not "14 sq ft" and "2 in". Physicist read this at 150 and 300 dpi; I rendered p.322 at 500 dpi myself [read: page image p.322] and the line reads "In connection with a leyden jar of 1 1/3 square feet surface, it produces sparks of 2 3/4 inches" (the last fraction is small; 2 3/4 is my reading, 2 3/8 is the alternative). The text-layer "14" is the digit "1" plus a fraction mark. The mathematician and contrarian both built a comparison on 14 sq ft (29 nF, "100 to 1000 times Houston's conductors") and so overstated the jar's capacitance by about 10 times. Recomputed [computed]: 1 1/3 sq ft = 0.124 m^2; glass 3 mm, relative permittivity about 6 [memory, medium]; C = eps0 er A / d = 2.2 nF (1.3 nF if the glass is 5 mm). That is still about 200 times a 1 sq ft isolated conductor (9.6 pF), so the qualitative conclusion stands, but the contrarian's and mathematician's jar numbers must not be used. Stale copies: claims.md claim 6; facts.json Wahl entry; mathematician.md and contrarian.md themselves.
3. The five-inch spark belongs to the two-conductor arrangement with neither pole earthed, not to the one-pole-earthed case (contrarian, confirmed in Houston p.595). claims.md claim 3 blends them.
4. The lecture table was not an insulated conductor: Houston says it is in "partial connection with the earth" through gas and water pipes (contrarian [read]). Only the tin-still arrangements used insulated conductors on glass.
5. Houston 1876 (Investigator's lead) fills the gap on the engine: the engine and boiler were "in metallic connection with the water-pipes" [read: Houston 1876, j.59-60, per three reviewers]. The "path not described" statement in claims.md is true of the 1871 note only. Caution on the battery: the 1876 text says "one pole of the battery" is joined to a gas pipe, and the white sparks "passed between the platinum points of the coil" [read, per mathematician and contrarian]. Read literally that is the primary side. Both reviewers and the Investigator take it to mean the secondary poles because Houston says he repeated the 1871 arrangement; I agree this is the likelier reading but it is a reading, not a fact.
6. Atherton's "30 m" disagrees with Houston's "fully thirty feet" (9 m) (physicist). The only longer distance in the record is Woodbury's 1875 "90 feet" (27 m) rooftop story. Treat "30 m" as an unreconciled secondary-source figure, probably a unit slip; do not attach it to the 1871 experiment. Atherton also merges the 1871 and 1875 episodes.
7. The forum retelling ("In 1872, Elihu Thomson ... any insulated metal object anywhere in the building ... long continuous white sparks"; Kelly; Energetic Forum) has a different date, a different person and wider claims than Houston's 1871 note ("within eight or nine feet"). It is a retelling that differs in date, person and wording; "radiant energy" and "scalar wave" are the posters' words, not Houston's. (Amended in the QE revision below: part of its wider reach traces to Houston's own 1876 account, so "grew" was too strong.)
8. Morton's secondary-condenser paper is no longer missing: JFI vol. 83 (LIII), April 1867, pp.256-260 [read, Investigator files]. It already says the jar "shortens the spark and increases greatly its brightness" and calls this well known. The length-versus-quantity trade-off was therefore published four years before Houston; Houston's novelty is loading with a large conductor against the earth, not the trade-off itself.
9. Wikipedia's voltage table is not a safe extrapolation. [web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_coil gives 4 in = 110 kV, 8 in = 150 kV, 12 in = 190 kV, 16 in = 230 kV, which is linear at 10 kV/in and would put 21 in near 280 kV and 29 in near 360 kV (physicist). The same page says the Spottiswoode coil (280 miles of wire) gave a 42 in spark "corresponding to roughly one million volts", about 24 kV/in, double the table's slope. So the voltage behind "21 in" is uncertain by a factor of about 2 (roughly 250 to 500 kV [computed]). No verdict depends on the absolute value; the reviewers' "about 280 kV" is a lower estimate.

Other points accepted from the Investigator and reviewers: Wahl substituted for Houston at Central High in 1872-73 (Edmonds 1902, as quoted by the Investigator); the contrarian's note that Snyder joined the staff in 1873, so he can witness 1875 but not 1871.

Recomputation where reviewers differ

Capacitance of an isolated conductor of area A: C = 4 pi eps0 r with r = sqrt(A / 4 pi) (eps0 = 8.85e-12 F/m) [computed]. 1 sq ft (0.0929 m^2): r = 8.6 cm, C = 9.6 pF. 300 sq ft (27.9 m^2): r = 1.49 m, C = 166 pF. Physicist, mathematician and contrarian agree (9.6 and 166-170 pF). A real conductor on glass jars near floors and pipes has more, a factor of 2 to 5 [memory, medium; mathematician].

Two-conductor series rule: C_series = C_a C_b / (C_a + C_b) tends to the smaller one. Both physicist and mathematician use it for Houston's five-inch result; I agree. Cascade rule: n equal condensers in series have C/n. Wahl's 20-pane cascade condenser has capacitance far below one jar; physicist and mathematician agree; pane sizes are not given, so the mathematician's 41 pF (6 x 8 in panes assumed) is an illustration only.

Energy-limited spark: with E0 the energy the coil passes to the secondary per break, V_max = sqrt(2 E0 / C), Q = sqrt(2 E0 C), so length times charge is roughly constant above the "knee" C ~ 2 E0 / V_b^2. The physicist's and mathematician's models are the same model. The knee location is not known because E0 is not in either source (neither primary current, nor inductance, nor break rate is given). The physicist's 0.125 J is an assumption; the mathematician's "few joules" is an assumption; I accept neither as a source value. The claim of both that a conductor near 1 sq ft sits near the knee depends on that assumption and is only an order-of-magnitude consistency, not a prediction.

Disagreement: mathematician says "without sensible diminution in quantity" costs about 20 percent in charge (6/5) in the energy-limited regime; physicist says energy stays level and charge falls below the knee; contrarian says unfalsifiable as written. These do not conflict: all three agree the statement is eye-judged and too loose to test; the mathematician's 20 percent figure is model-dependent and I report it as "a change of tens of percent, which an eye cannot judge".

Wahl's jar energy check: at about 90 kV on 2.2 nF, 1/2 C V^2 is about 9 J [computed]; at 60 kV on 1.3 nF it is about 2 J. Neither source gives the primary energy, so whether the coil can deliver this per break from three cells is unchecked. This is an open item, not an inconsistency: the mathematician's estimate of the primary's stored energy was "a few joules", the physicist could not say. I leave it Plausible, untested.

"Coupled for quantity" shortens 21 in to 12 in. If the two secondary halves go in parallel, each has half the turns and voltage roughly halves: 21 / 2 = 10.5 in against 12 in observed (mathematician). The physicist read the table-based halving as about 6 in. Because the table is linear with an offset, 10.5 to 12 in is within what the rule gives; the meaning of "for quantity" (parallel versus series) is not stated by Wahl, so this is a consistency check, not a test.

Radiation versus induction: the physicist computes near-zone radius lambda / 2 pi of about 5 m at 10 MHz and says 8 to 9 ft is in the near zone while 30 ft is near the transition; the mathematician computes 0.15 wavelength at 5 MHz and says it cannot decide. Both rest on an assumed L (1 to 10 microhenry) and C (30 to 100 pF), giving 5 to 29 MHz [computed]. The two agree the arithmetic cannot decide; neither frequency nor field was ever measured. The Energetic Forum "5 kHz" mixes the coil's own secondary ringing (low) with the gap-discharge oscillation (megahertz); no measurement exists for either.

Corrected claim list (final verdicts)

Claim 1. One secondary pole earthed (gas pipe), the other on a large, partly insulated conductor (lecture table): spark thicker, shorter, silvery white; sparks drawable from metal 8-9 ft away (Houston 1871).

Agreement: all three say Established as a qualitative effect, consistent with Leyden-jar practice (Morton 1867) and spark-gap theory; no measurement of anything. Disagreement: none on the verdict. The contrarian adds that Houston's frictional-machine analogy is loose and the mathematician that "instead of being lost" mixes two pictures. Stronger argument: the physicist's, because it ties the three observed changes (thicker, shorter, whiter) to one cause, added capacitance, and the contrarian and mathematician reproduce the same signs. Tested: observed by Houston alone, once (1871); repeated by Houston and Thomson in December 1875 with a ten-cell battery [read: Houston 1876]; the family of effects was independently seen by Edison (Nov 1875), later by Hughes, Dolbear, S. P. Thompson and Hertz (1887-88) [read via Atherton, secondary; web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etheric_force . The exact 1871 arrangement was never measured by anyone. Final verdict: Established (the qualitative effect: capacitive loading with an earth return). Never properly tested (any quantity: spark length, charge, energy). It was not dismissed; it was not followed up quantitatively.

Claim 2. Sparks drawn from a distant stove, a small steam engine "fully thirty feet" away, and a wire in a room below.

Agreement: Established as an observation; consistent with conduction through pipework plus near-field coupling; nothing in mainstream physics changes. Disagreement: how to interpret it. Physicist and mathematician: induction versus radiation cannot be settled from the record. Contrarian: the radiated-wave or "radiant energy" reading is Never properly tested (not refuted, not confirmed, not asked). Stronger argument: the contrarian's framing is the more accurate one: Houston and Thomson's 1875-76 null tests (electroscope, galvanometer, cotton wool) cannot exclude an oscillating charge, because an oscillation averages to zero; they show "no steady charge or current", not "no radiation". But the physicist's point is also right: nothing in the 1871 note needs a propagating wave, and the engine and boiler were joined to the water pipes (Houston 1876), so the 30 ft is a conducted path. Both fit together. Tested: Houston 1871; Houston and Thomson 1875; Woodbury (1944) reports Snyder drawing sparks "90 feet" above the coil in 1875 and exclaiming "Electric energy transmitted through space!" (one published source, a Thomson-side biography written 69 years later; no contemporary note found; it shows signs of overlaying Houston's published text, e.g. "knife blade" appears only in Houston 1876). I keep it in the record as testimony, not measurement. Edison's independent 1875 sparks at "twenty to thirty feet" are in the same family [web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etheric_force . Final verdict, split: sparks occur at these distances through a pipe-connected network: Established (observation, accepted physics). That it was free-space wireless transmission or "radiant energy": Never properly tested (no frequency, field or distance data, and the question was not asked in the 1870s). Claim of excess energy: nobody in the sources makes it; no evidence offered either way.

Claim 3. A large insulated conductor on one pole, or one on each pole, raises "quantity"; shrinking one of two conductors below about 1 sq ft restores a spark of about 5 in "without sensible diminution in quantity" from a coil rated 6 in.

Agreement: the series-capacitance model reproduces the direction and rough size (all three). Disagreement: verdict labels. Physicist: Established as a qualitative trade-off, Never properly tested for the 5 in figure. Mathematician: charge increase Plausible, untested; 5 in result Never properly tested. Contrarian: Never properly tested. These differ more in wording than in substance; all agree nothing was measured. Stronger argument: the physicist's split is best, because the trade-off (capacitance shortens, brightens, loudens) is textbook and was published by Morton in 1867, while the specific 5 in, no-loss figure rests on an eye judgement by one observer. The contrarian's criticism that it is unfalsifiable as written is correct and I keep it. Final verdict, split: the qualitative trade-off, Established. The "5 in, no sensible loss of quantity" result: Never properly tested (no photometer, charge or energy measurement; not dismissed).

Claim 4. Mechanism and prediction: the large conductor allows "rapid discharge" and so "rapid induction" in the secondary, as when a frictional machine's conductor is earthed; one pole on an insulated conductor of several hundred sq ft and the other earthed gives the maximum.

Agreement: the 1871 wording is not a derivation and is loose; Houston's 1876 wording ("condensation of the spark by connection with extended surfaces, similar to ... a Leyden battery") is the correct capacitor description. All agree it was never tested at several hundred sq ft. Disagreement: the "maximum". Physicist: Plausible, untested as a statement about charge (charge grows as sqrt(C)), but mistaken as a statement about energy (which cannot exceed E0). Mathematician: underspecified, since no maximum exists without naming the quantity maximised. Contrarian: contradicted by Houston's own data in the same note, since more capacity gave "great diminution in the length", so an optimum, not a monotone gain, and likely wrong. Stronger argument: the mathematician's and contrarian's. "Maximum increase" with no stated quantity is not a testable prediction; the physicist's concession (charge rises, length vanishes) agrees. At 166 pF and an assumed E0 of order 0.1 J the spark would be about an inch or less, so "maximum quantity" would trade away the spark itself. All three arrive at the same physics; they differ on whether to call it plausible or wrong, and the answer is: right for charge, wrong or undefined for the thing Houston evidently cared about, a "quantity spark" of useful length. Final verdict, split: the capacitance (extended surface as Leyden coating) mechanism: Established (in the 1876 form). The 1871 phrase "rapid induction by rapid discharge": Historically superseded but instructive (the induction is in the primary-to-secondary coupling, not in the discharge; the inventor corrected his own wording by 1876). The "several hundred sq ft gives the maximum" proposal: Never properly tested (never built), and underspecified; as an energy statement it is mistaken.

Claim 5. Ritchie's coil for Morton (44 1/3 miles of secondary, about 250 lb) gives 21 in sparks from three bichromate cells, more reliably than a larger London coil (29 in, about sixty cells, "soon failed") (Wahl).

Agreement: all three: Plausible, untested independently; the specification is internally consistent after correction (wire length, weights, 325 sq ft condenser); nothing in physics changes. Disagreement: none on the verdict. The mathematician notes a loose end: the secondary weighs 44 1/2 lb against 34.7 lb bare, a 27 percent excess he and I attribute to silk and paraffin paper (not stated by Wahl). Stake: Wahl, co-editor of the journal, describes the instrument owned by the other editor, Morton, and praises its maker (Ritchie, who warrants it safe at 21 in); the London coil's failure is reported at second hand ("we understand"). This is an interested party's characterization, and it is the only description in the record. It is also the only description of the instrument's performance: the numbers in Wahl are the numbers of the people who owned and sold it. Nothing in it conflicts with other long-spark coils [web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_coil (Spottiswoode: 280 miles, 42 in). No independent test, no surviving instrument record found (one query), and Wahl's promised "further account" is not in the volume. Final verdict: Plausible, untested (no independent measurement; the claim is engineering, not physics, and is not in dispute).

Claim 6. Jar and condenser: with a 1 1/3 sq ft jar the 21 in coil gives about 2 3/4 in white sparks; with Morton's 20-pane secondary condenser 14 in sparks, "of the intense whiteness and loud report of the Leyden jar discharge"; coupling the halves for quantity gives 12 in.

Agreement: Established as a qualitative trade-off; consistent with Morton 1867 (one jar 1 in, six in cascade 4 in, eight-plate cascade box 5 1/2 in white, loud). The specific figures are single reports by an interested party. Correction applied: the jar is 1 1/3 sq ft (2 nF), not 14 sq ft (29 nF). This affects the mathematician's and contrarian's comparisons only; their verdict does not change. Final verdict, split: jar or condenser shortens, whitens and loudens the spark; series condensers lengthen it: Established. The figures 2 3/4 in, 14 in, 12 in and the meaning of "coupled for quantity": Plausible, untested (one report; consistent with the parallel-halves rule within the loose linear scaling).

What would settle it

1. "Quantity" versus capacitance, measured (settles claims 3 and 4): any modern spark coil of known break energy, a set of calibrated capacitors or isolated sheets from 10 pF to 200 pF in the secondary, an oscilloscope with a high-voltage divider for spark voltage, and a calorimetric or photodiode measurement of spark energy. Prediction from the model: spark length falls as 1/sqrt(C) above the knee, energy per spark reaches a plateau at E0, charge continues to rise; so there is an optimum C, not a monotone gain. A result with no knee would be an anomaly.
2. Conducted versus radiated at 8 to 30 ft (settles claim 2): a loop antenna or spark-gap detector at 1, 3, 10, 30 ft, with and without the pipe or earth connection and with the pipes disconnected, plus a spectrum or frequency count of the gap discharge. If the signal at 30 ft disappears when the pipes are disconnected, conduction dominates; if not, a radiated component exists. Also measure the null tests the 1870s used (electroscope, galvanometer) with a fast scope to show the oscillation they could not see.
3. A replication of the exact 1871 arrangement (table, gas pipe, tin-ware on glass) with a 6 in coil, with ammeter and break rate recorded (settles whether Houston's description is reproducible).
4. Records: Thomson's notebooks and letters at the APS (Mss.Ms.Coll.74) for who made the 1871 observations and with what battery and dates; Morton's papers at the Stevens Institute and American Journal of Science 1871-72 for Wahl's promised account; Brenni 2015 for the coil's history; Fortschritte der Physik 1871 for the German abstract of Houston.

Open questions

• Who made the 1871 observations? Woodbury (1944, Thomson biography; Thomson's credit is at stake) says Thomson did and Houston "took sole credit"; Houston's note names no assistant; Thomson's 1902 recollection (Edmonds) does not mention the coil work. The single source assigning the work to Thomson is quoted and weighed; it is not corroborated by Thomson's own words I could read, and its details differ from Houston's (jar spark "vivid blue" against "silvery white", water pipe against gas pipe). Undecided; physics does not depend on it.
• What was the battery, primary current and break rate in 1871? Not stated. Houston 1876 gives a ten-cell electro-poion for December 1875 only; its wording ("one pole of the battery") is ambiguous (Correction 5).
• Was Houston's 6 in coil the same instrument as in 1875-76 (also "six inches")? Likely, not proved.
• What frequency and field did the sparks have? Never measured. Estimates of 5 to 30 MHz are the reviewers' assumptions.
• Does a Leyden jar of 2 nF on a three-cell coil store about 2 to 9 J per spark? The coil's primary energy is not given, so Wahl's 2 3/4 in jar figure is unchecked.
• What did "coupled for quantity" mean in Ritchie's coil (parallel or series halves)?

Absence of evidence: where the record goes dark

Three silences.

A. No follow-up by Wahl or Morton on the Morton coil. Wahl promised "at a future time we will give some further account"; none appears in JFI July 1871 to June 1872 (Investigator), and no instrument, museum record or Stevens record was found (one query). Competing explanations: (a) the experiments were done but not written up (editorial workload; Morton's 1870 move to the Stevens Institute presidency): consistent with no trace in the journal, and a likely case for busy editors; evidence against: none found, but nothing for it either; (b) published elsewhere (American Journal of Science, Stevens publications, lecture notices): not searched; (c) not done or the coil was retired or sold: no record; (d) the instrument failed or was damaged: Morton said he would not risk it before lectures ended, and the coil's design anticipated repair, so failure is conceivable but unevidenced. The deciding records are Morton's papers and Stevens archives, American Journal of Science 1871-72, and newspaper lecture notices for Baltimore and Washington. Commercial or secrecy explanations carry no support here: this was a published lecture instrument.

B. No further Houston note on the connection between June 1871 and December 1875. Competing explanations: Houston left to study in Germany in 1872-73 and Wahl taught in his place (Edmonds 1902, as quoted by the Investigator), which by itself lowers the chance of a note in that year; he considered the observation minor and published it only when Edison's claim of November 1875 prompted it (supported by the editors' priority note in 1876 and by the note's own hedged style); he and Thomson continued informal experiments that were not written up (Woodbury's account of 1875 rooftop sparks, and the APS finding aid's January 1876 "Experiments with Ruhmkorff coil and spark", suggest they were active in 1875); or the 1871 Scientific American reprint and German abstracts (Fortschritte der Physik; hits in HathiTrust, text not read) were all the attention it received. Against any suppression story: the note was printed in two journals and abstracted abroad within the year, and nobody challenged it. For a priority dispute: Houston's editors in 1876 stated the priority claim themselves. Records that would decide: Thomson's notebooks (APS), Houston's papers and letters, Franklin Institute meeting minutes of 1871, and the German abstract.

C. Edison's parallel "etheric force" claim went dark after 1876. Wikipedia says Edison's work was ended by Western Union's financial pressure [web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etheric_force (not verified elsewhere; Wills 2007, which discusses the Houston and Thomson response, was blocked by a bot-check). Competing explanations: financial pressure (stake: Western Union); the tests by Houston and Thomson in April 1876 persuaded most that it was induction; Edison's own July 1876 tests did not change that; and the interest shifted to the telephone and phonograph. The evidence that the rejection was by experiment is real (the balanced-battery test is a clean, controlled demonstration that the sparks depend on stray-capacitance symmetry), though the test addressed "no new force" and not "is it radiated". The Houston-Thomson authors had a priority stake in showing Edison wrong. Not decided; the record that would decide is Edison's July 1876 notebooks (Edison Papers) and Western Union records.

None of these three silences is evidence of suppression of the Houston observations; each has at least one ordinary explanation. None can be closed from the files at hand.

Web verification (budget 8; used 2)

• [web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_coil: spark-length-to-voltage table (4 in = 110 kV to 16 in = 230 kV) confirmed, and Spottiswoode's 280-mile coil at 42 in "roughly one million volts" (this conflicts with simple extrapolation of the table; Correction 9).
• [web] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elihu_Thomson: Houston was "a former teacher and later colleague of Thomson's at Central High School"; they founded the Thomson-Houston Electric Company (merged into General Electric, 1892). Replaces the facts.json [memory, high] note.
• Not checked and not load-bearing: glass permittivity (about 6, [memory, medium]), copper density (high), bichromate cell voltage, Houston's German study dates (taken from Edmonds, read by the Investigator), the Etheric force page claims beyond the cited extracts. The reviewers' web checks (Hertz about 30 kV and 50 MHz; Etheric force page) are accepted.

Summary of final verdicts

QE revision (2026-10-08): no verdict changed. Claim 2's wording is widened to carry Houston's own 1876 reach (see "QE revision" below).

Overall: nothing in either article conflicts with mainstream physics, and neither claims excess energy. The note is an early, qualitative and unmeasured record of capacitively loaded spark-gap behaviour and of pickup by nearby grounded metal, 15 years before Hertz. Its lasting interest is historical (the 1875-76 Edison dispute, the Houston-Thomson authorship question, and the historians' reading of it as pre-Hertz radiation), and its limit is that nothing was measured. The "radiant energy" reading in the free-energy literature is that community's characterization; nothing in Houston or Wahl supports a claim of energy beyond input, and nothing refutes it by measurement either, since no energy was ever measured.

Corrections to earlier documents (for the orchestrator)

• claims.md claim 5: change "443 miles" to "44 1/3 miles" and rewrite the contrast with App's coil; claim 6: "1 1/3 sq ft jar, about 2 3/4 in", not "14 sq ft, 2 in"; claim 3: separate the neither-pole-earthed five-inch result from the one-pole-earthed case; claim 1: the table was in partial earth connection; the scope note (Morton's condenser paper missing) is outdated, as it is found (Morton 1867).
• facts.json Wahl entry: summary and key_claims ("443 miles", "443 lb", "825 sq ft", "0.1635 in", "14 sq ft", "2 in", "13 in"/"18 in" bobbin sections) as in Correction 1 and 2; Houston entry: add the 1876 pipe-connection for the engine and the battery caveat; Thomson note: replace [memory, high] with the web source above.
• deep/ read and digests quote the OCR numbers; mark as superseded rather than edit.
• mathematician.md and contrarian.md: the "14 sq ft jar" comparisons (29 nF; "100 to 1000 times") should be read as 1 1/3 sq ft (about 2 nF).
• Sites.md "Corrections" bullet on the battery: add the primary-side reading caveat (Correction 5).

QE revision (2026-10-08)

Inputs: qe.md (verdict MINOR) and the two new deep reads appended to deep/on-a-new-connection-for-the-induction-coil-Journal-of-the-Franklin-Institute-47c675.md (editors' short items on energy claims and batteries; Wahl's numbers transcribed from 400 dpi page images). I also checked Houston Jan 1876 in research/files: the line "neighborhood of the coil, and, indeed, in adjoining rooms" is there (OCR line 4217) [read]. Tags as above.

Result: no verdict changes. Six claims keep their verdicts. The changes below are to wording, figures and the record.

1. Houston's own 1876 account widens the 1871 reach (QE D6; amends Correction 7 and the claim 2 text)

Correction 7 called the forum retelling "a retelling that grew". That was too strong. Houston himself wrote in January 1876, about the 1871 experiments, that "sparks could be drawn from any metallic objects in the neighborhood of the coil, and, indeed, in adjoining rooms" [read: research/files/JFI-1876-01, ~line 4217; QE read ~4214-4217]. For the December 1875 repetition he wrote "from all metallic objects in the same room with the coil, or in adjoining rooms" [read: same file, ~4308, per QE]. The 1871 note itself gives "eight or nine feet" (stove, tin ware), "fully thirty feet" (engine only) and a wire in a room below [read: Houston 1871, pp.594-596]. So the breadth "any metal object, anywhere nearby, adjoining rooms" has a source in the inventor's own later words; it is not forum accretion. What still differs in the free-energy retelling: the year (1872), the person (Thomson), "any insulated metal object anywhere in the building" (the 1876 text does not say the whole building), and "long continuous white sparks". "Radiant energy" and "scalar wave" remain the posters' words. Claim 2 verdict is unchanged: the 1876 wording is still a statement of sparks from metal, with Houston's own null tests of April 1876 and the pipe connections he reported; it adds no measurement of distance, frequency or field.

2. Figures confirmed or corrected by the Wahl deep read (QE D1, D2, D4, D5)

The deep reader transcribed pp.319-323 at 400 dpi. It agrees with Corrections 1 and 2 and settles points left open there. - Confirmed: 44 1/3 miles (234,100 ft), secondary 44 1/2 lb, .007 in wire, primary 200 ft, 0.1655 in, 17 lb, condenser 325 sq ft (100 + 100 + 75 + 50), coil about 250 lb (packed 355 lb), 40 in long, 21 in sparks from three cells [read: page image p.320-321]. - Leyden jar spark: 2 3/4 in. The deep reader checked the crop and says the numerator is 3 over 4, so the alternative 2 3/8 that Correction 2 kept open is not supported. The jar area, 1 1/3 sq ft, is a moderate-confidence reading (the denominator glyph is small; 1 1/8 cannot be fully excluded from the image). My capacitance figure (2.2 nF) rests on 1 1/3; at 1 1/8 sq ft it would be about 1.9 nF, which changes nothing in claim 6. - Newly corrected: width of base is 13 in, bobbin section 13 in each (text layer and digest say 18), total height 18 1/2 in, core wire about 1/18 in thick (core 14 lb). The physicist's "44 1/4 lb" and core "1/8 in" were misreads; the contrarian's "about 44 1/2 miles" was too. No verdict effect. Core and bobbin sizes appear in no claim. - Journal pages: Wahl is j.212-216 (PDF pp.319-323), from running heads (212 on PDF p.319, 216 on p.323). The 213-216 and 212-217 in the deep read and facts.json are wrong. The earlier text-layer "218" in the index is OCR for 213, the page where the body text of the comparison starts. - Further numbers now in the record: 20-pane condenser gives 14 in; 8-pane condenser in a Gassiot cascade (no length given); coupled for quantity 12 in, with an "auriola" (the glow around the discharge) that can be blown into a flame-like surface 3 in from the line when the poles are about 4 in apart; four half-gallon Leyden jars give "deafening" sparks that light a 4 ft zoetrope disk visible at 60 ft; glass blocks 3 in thick are pierced in a way Wahl says represents about the same resistance as 21 in of air; the insulation between primary and secondary was shown by experiment to resist 50 percent more than a 21 in spark. Battery: three jars of 10 x 12 in, five 8 x 10 in plates of each metal per jar, 3 in immersion for full power [read: page images pp.321-323]. These are all Wahl's (an interested party's) figures and visual measurements; none is instrumented. The "coupled for quantity means halves in parallel" in the deep read is the deep reader's gloss; Wahl does not say it, so my open question (parallel or series) stays open. - Stake wording in claim 5: the deep read adds that Ritchie, as maker, "warrants" the coil safe at 21 in; this is a maker's warranty on his own product and is now noted beside Wahl's own stake. The deep reader says Wahl had no stake in App's coil, which is true, but the account of App's coil is hearsay ("we understand"), as stated.

3. Editors' tests of extra-energy claims in the same volume (QE D7; retention)

The second deep read supplies pertinent context for readers who reach this volume through free-energy literature. Nothing here changes a verdict on Houston or Wahl, who made no excess-energy claim. It is kept because it shows how the same editors handled such claims in the same six months. - Highton's "doubled wire" claim (JFI p.266-267, PDF pp.266-267): the editors describe it as an attack on the conservation of force and as perpetual motion. Their reply is an argument, not an experiment: doubling wire length and section at equal resistance doubles the lifting force, but charging the longer coil takes twice as long, so twice the zinc is spent per cycle. Highton's counter, as quoted, was that the current is so fast that the difference in time is negligible. Highton's own papers (Chemical News) are not in the folder, so his side is known only through an adverse editorial [read: deep read section 1]. - Newark galvanic engine (p.448): the editors did not see or test it; they call it a "perpetual-motion machine" that "will reveal the true origin of its force" [read]. This is expectation, not evidence either way. - Tinfoil electromagnet (p.448-449): the editors tested the claim that tinfoil between winding layers "largely increased" the power. Using Mayer's comparison apparatus they report "no improvement whatever", signed "H. M." (probably Henry Morton, inference). Single qualitative null result, no numbers, no apparatus detail, by editors who had stated their view in advance. Weigh it so. - Zinc and coal duty (p.256-257): all arithmetic reproduces. One pound of carbon, burned and applied with no loss, gives 10,981,000 ft-lb, about 332 hp for a minute; real engines get about 4 percent. One pound of zinc oxidised gives 1,808,390 ft-lb, about 0.91 hp-hour; a perfect zinc battery and engine would be about five times as effective as coal in a real plant. Running 2 1/2 hp for 10 hours would need 27.4 lb of zinc (the text layer's "24 horse-power" is an OCR error for 2 1/2) [read: page image p.257]. - Sharples on bichromate cells (p.433): a nitric-bichromate-sulphuric fluid gives "the same electro-motive force as an ordinary Bunsen", internal resistance 50 percent higher, steady for twelve hours [read]. No volts or ohms are given. This is context for the open E0 question (claim 4 and "What would settle it"); it fixes no number for Morton's three-cell battery.

4. Records to add to "What would settle it" §4 (QE D8)

• Susskind (1964), the snippet "...Thomson's 1871 experiments while his own paper was in proof and that he ... Thomson and Houston were science instructors in a secondary school" (research/2026-10-08-google-search.md, query 21). The subject of "learned of" is cut off in the snippet, so it may concern Dolbear or another author, not authorship of the 1871 note. It is a lead on who knew of the 1871 work and when; not read.
• Compton, "Elihu Thomson the Scientist" (1939), JSTOR 1664186, snippet: "tiny sparks could be obtained from metal objects wherever they were, in the cases or outside, from the door-knobs or from apparatus" [web, snippet only; APS memoir PDF https://www.amphilsoc.org/bulletin/20011/elihu.pdf not opened]. A Thomson-side account of the same effect; useful for the authorship question.
• Coulson (1957), J. Franklin Inst. vol. 264, "Elihu Thomson, 1853-1937", cites Houston 1871 as part of Thomson's story [web, snippet only; paywalled].
• Highton's Chemical News papers and the American journal quotation on the Newark engine: not in the folder; would let the reader weigh the editors' account of them.

5. Corrections to earlier documents (additions to the list above)

• Arbiter Correction 7: "a retelling that grew" is withdrawn in favour of the 1876 quotation above.
• Correction 2: the spark is 2 3/4 in (not open between 2 3/4 and 2 3/8); the jar area 1 1/3 sq ft is a moderate-confidence image reading.
• Correction 1: the "44 1/4 [1/3] miles" in my own text was my transcription slip; the image reads 44 1/3 miles. Correct as stated in the QE and the deep read.
• Also for the orchestrator (as in qe.md D1-D3, D9): facts.json Wahl entry (base width 13 in, core about 1/18 in, j.212-216, plus the 2 3/4 in and 325 sq ft figures); claims.md claims 3, 5, 6; the research note wording for Snyder (the coil was 90 ft below the observatory, per Woodbury); physicist.md Corrections 1 and 2 as above; Thomson note to [web] Wikipedia.
• No verdict in the table above changed. The only table changes are the clarifying notes on claims 2 and 6.