Governor Gets Shock With Each Handshake

1915

Iowa Executive Puzzled Over the Repetition of Sensations — Discovery Is Made

DES MOINES, Iowa, Dec. 16. — Governor Clarke's dynamic personality was much more so than usual the other day, so much more so that the Governor shocked himself and kept on shocking without knowing what was the matter.

As visitors came and went during the afternoon, every time one received the gubernatorial handshake, the executive winced a bit and drew back his arm. Finally he decided it was time to see what was wrong.

"Say, Gus, what's going on here?" he demanded of A. C. Gustafson, his secretary. "Every time I shake hands with somebody I get a shock."

A brand new thick velvet carpet had just been placed on the floor in the Governor's office.

"Ah," exclaimed the secretary. "I'll bet that's it."

Gustafson dragged his feet over the heavy carpet as children used to do in the evening in the parlor before the gas was lighted. From the ends of the secretary's fingers the sparks of static electricity shot out.

"That's it," the secretary announced. "This new carpet is dried thoroly now with the radiator heat and all you have to do is walk across it to stir up the current."

Visitors in the office experimented and succeeded in making vivid electric flashes come from their fingers on contact with some other individual or with something leading to the ground. In the course of an argument arising from the Governor's experience, one man in a downstairs office succeeded in lighting a gas jet with a spark which came from his fingers after dragging his feet over a heavy carpet.