Signalling through space without wires : being a description of the work of Hertz & his successors / by Oliver J. Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
[1900]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Signalling through space without wires : being a description of the work of Hertz & his successors / by Oliver J. Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    If charged positively nothing appears to happen, the action is very slow; but a negative charge leaks away in a few seconds if the light is bright. Any source of light rich in ultra-violet rays will do ; the light from a spark is perhaps most powerful of all. A pane of glass cuts off all the action ; so does atmos- pheric air in sufficient thickness (at any rate, town air), hence sunlight is not powerful. A pane of quartz transmits the action almost undiminished, but fluorspar may be more transparent still. Condensing the arc rays with a quartz lens and analy- sing them with a quartz prism or reflection grating, we find that the most effective part of the light is high up in the ultra- violet, surprisingly far beyond the limits of the visible spectrum* (Fig. 9, next page). This is rather a digression, but I have taken some pains to show it properly because of the interest betrayed by Lord * While preparing for the lecture it occurred to me to try, if possible during the lecture itself, some new experiments on the effect of light on negatively charged bits of rock and ice, because if the effect is not limited to metals it must be important in connection with atmospheric electricity. When Mr. Branly coated an aluminium plate with an insulating varnish, he found that its charge was able to soak in and out of the varnish during illumination (Comptes Rendus, Vol. CX., p. 898, 1890). Now the mountain tops of a negatively charged earth are exposed to very ultra-violet rays, and the air is a dielectric in which quiet up-carrying and sudden downpour of electricity could go on in a manner not very unlike the well-known behaviour of water vapour ; and this perhaps may be the reason, or one of the reasons, why it is not unusual to experience a thunderstorm after a few fine days. I have now tried these experiments on such geological fragments as were handy, and find that many of them discharge negative electricity under the action of a naked arc, especially from the side of the specimens which was somewhat dusty, but that when wet they discharge much less rapidly, and when positively charged hardly at all. Ice and garden soil discharge negative electrification, too, under ultra-violet illu- mination, but not so quickly as limestone, mica schist, ferruginous quartz, clay, and some other specimens. Granite barely acts ; it seems to insulate too well. The ice and soil were tried in their usual moist condition, but, when thoroughly dry, soil discharges quite rapidly. No rock tested was found to discharge as quickly as does a surface of perfectly bright metal, such as iron, but many discharged much more quickly than ordinary dull iron, and rather more quickly than when the bright iron surface was thinly oiled or wetted with water. To-day (June 5, 1894) I find that the leaves of Geranium discharge positive electrification five times as quickly as negative, under the action of an arc-light, and that glass cuts the effect off while quartz transmits it. [For Elster and Geitel'a experiments, and those of Righi, see Appendices, p. 115 et seq.]