Curiosities of Light and Sight Part 1

Curiosities of Light and Sight.

by Shelford Bidwell.

PREFACE.

The following chapters are based upon notes of several unconnected lectures addressed to audiences of very different cla.s.ses in the theatres of the Royal Inst.i.tution, the London Inst.i.tution, the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, and Caius House, Battersea.

In preparing the notes for publication the matter has been re-arranged with the object of presenting it, as far as might be, in methodical order; additions and omissions have been freely made, and numerous diagrams, ill.u.s.trative of the apparatus and experiments described, have been provided.

I do not know that any apology is needed for offering the collection as thus re-modelled to a larger public. Though the essays are, for the most part, of a popular and informal character, they touch upon a number of curious matters of which no readily accessible account has yet appeared, while, even in the most elementary parts, an attempt has been made to handle the subject with some degree of freshness.

The interesting subjective phenomena which are a.s.sociated with the sense of vision do not appear to have received in this country the attention they deserve. This little book may perhaps be of some slight service in suggesting to experimentalists, both professional and amateur, an attractive field of research which has. .h.i.therto been only partially explored.

CHAPTER I.

LIGHT AND THE EYE.

In the present scientific age every one knows that light is transmitted across s.p.a.ce through the medium of the luminiferous ether. This ether fills the whole of the known universe, as far at least as the remotest star visible in the most powerful telescopes, and is often said to be possessed of properties of so paradoxical a character that their unreserved acceptance has always been a matter of considerable difficulty.

The ether is a thing of immeasurable tenuity, being many millions of times rarer than the most perfect vacuum of which we have any experience: it offers no sensible obstruction to the movements of the celestial bodies, and even the flimsiest of material substances can pa.s.s through it as if it were nothing. Yet we have been taught that this same ether is an elastic solid with a great degree of rigidity, its resistance to distortion being, in comparison with the density, nearly ten thousand million times greater than that of steel: thus was explained the prodigious speed with which it propagates transverse vibrations.

A few years ago, a distinguished leader in science endeavoured in the course of a lecture to ill.u.s.trate these apparently incompatible properties with the aid of a large slab of Burgundy pitch. He showed that the pitch was hard and brittle, yet, as he said, a bullet laid upon the slab would, in the course of a few months, sink into and penetrate through it, the hard brittle ma.s.s being really a very viscous fluid. The ether, it was suggested, resembled the pitch in having the rigidity of a solid and yet gradually yielding; it was, in fact, a rigid solid for luminiferous vibrations executed in about a hundred-billionth part of a second, and at the same time highly mobile to bodies like the earth going through it at the rate of twenty miles in a second.

This ill.u.s.tration, felicitous as it is, would, however, scarcely avail to force conviction upon an unwilling mind, even if it were admitted that the period of an ether wave is necessarily no more than a hundred-billionth of a second or thereabouts, which is probably very far from the truth.

But, indeed, the elastic solid theory of the ether has failed to give a consistent explanation of some of the most important points in observational optics; and, in spite of the exalted position which it has held, it can now hardly be regarded as representing a physical reality.

The famous researches of Hertz have established upon a secure experimental basis the hypothesis of Maxwell that light is an electro-magnetic phenomenon. Such electrical radiations as can be produced by suitable instruments are found to behave in exactly the same manner as those to which light is due. They travel through s.p.a.ce with the same speed; they can be reflected, refracted, polarised, and made to exhibit interference effects. No fact in physics can be much more firmly established than that of the essential ident.i.ty of light and electricity. It follows then that the displacements of the ether which const.i.tute light-waves are not necessarily of the same gross mechanical nature as those which we see on the surface of water, or which occur in the air when sound is transmitted through it. The displacements which the ether undergoes are not mechanical--primarily at all events--but electrical. Every one knows what a simple mechanical displacement is. If we push aside the bob of a suspended pendulum, that is a mechanical displacement. But if we electrify a stick of sealing wax by rubbing it with flannel, the surrounding ether undergoes electric displacement, and no one understands what electric displacement really is. Ultimately, no doubt, it will turn out to be of a mechanical nature, but it is almost certainly not a simple bodily distortion such as is caused, for example, when one presses a jelly with the finger.

Since, then, it is no longer necessary to a.s.sume that the exceedingly rare and subtile ether is a jelly-like solid in order to account for the manner in which it transmits light, one of the most serious difficulties in the way of its acceptance is removed. It is true that nothing is definitely known concerning the mechanism which takes the place of the simple transverse vibrations formerly postulated, but every one will admit that it is far easier to believe in what we know nothing about than in what we know to be impossible.

All scientific men are in fact agreed in recognising the real and genuine existence throughout s.p.a.ce of an ether capable, among other things, of transmitting at the speed of 186,000 miles per second disturbances which, whatever their precise nature, are of the kind which mathematicians are accustomed to call waves. How an ether wave is const.i.tuted will probably be known when we have found out exactly what electricity is: and that may be never.

The sensation of light results from the action of ether waves upon the organism of the eye, but the old belief that the sensation was primarily due to a series of mere mechanical impulses or beats, just as that of sound results from the mechanical impact of air-waves upon the drum of the ear, cannot any longer be upheld. The essential nature of the action exerted by ether waves is still undetermined, though many guesses at the truth have been hazarded. It may be electrical or it may be chemical; possibly it is both. Ether-waves, we know, are competent to bring about chemical changes, as in the familiar instance of the photographic processes; they can also produce electric phenomena, as, for example, when they fall upon a suitably prepared piece of selenium; but there is no evidence that they can exert any direct mechanical action of a vibratory character, and indeed it is barely conceivable that any portion of our organism should be adapted to take up vibrations of such enormous rapidity as those which characterise light-waves.

Of the mult.i.tude of ether-waves which traverse s.p.a.ce it is only comparatively few that have the power of exciting the sensation of light.

As regards limited range of sensibility there is a very close a.n.a.logy between hearing and seeing. No sensation of sound (at least of continuous sound) is produced when air-waves beat upon our ears unless the rate of the successive impulses lies within certain definite limits. It is just so with vision. If ether-waves fall upon our eyes at a less rate than about 400 billions per second, or at a greater rate than 750 billions per second, no sensation of light is perceived. There is another and more generally convenient way of stating this fact. Since all waves found in the ether travel through s.p.a.ce at exactly the same speed--186,000 miles a second--it follows that the length[1] of each of a series of h.o.m.ogeneous waves must be inversely proportional to their frequency, that is, to the rate at which they strike a fixed object, such as the eye. Instead, therefore, of specifying waves by their frequency we may equally well specify them by their length. Waves whose frequency is 400 billions per second have a length of about 1/34000 inch, this being the one four hundred billionth part of 186,000 miles; and those whose frequency is 750 billions have a wave-length of 1/64000 inch. Waves, then, of a length greater than 1/34000 inch or less than 1/64000 inch have no effect upon our organs of vision.[2]

In relation to this important fact it will be convenient to refer to a familiar but very beautiful experiment--the formation of a spectrum. An electric lamp is enclosed in an iron lantern, having in its front an upright slit; from this slit there issues a narrow beam of white light, which is made up of rays of many different wave-lengths, all mixed up together. By causing the light to pa.s.s through a prism the mixed rays are sorted out side by side according to their several wave-lengths, forming a broad, many-hued band or "spectrum" upon a white screen placed to receive it. (See Fig. 1.) To the visible rays of the longest wave-length is due the red colour on the extreme left. Waves of somewhat shorter length produce the adjoining stripe of orange, and the succeeding colours--yellow, green, and blue--correspond respectively to waves of shorter and shorter lengths. Lastly there comes a patch of violet due to those of the visible rays whose wave-length is the shortest of all. The wave-length of the light at the extreme edge of the red is about 1/34000 inch, and as we pa.s.s along the spectrum the wave-length gradually diminishes, until at the extreme outer edge of the violet it is about 1/64000 inch, or not much more than half that at the other end.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Fig. 1.--Image of Slit and of Spectrum._]

The two ends of the spectrum gradually fade away into darkness, and the point that I wish to insist upon and make perfectly clear is this:--The position of the boundaries terminating the visible spectrum does not depend upon anything whatever in the nature of light regarded as a physical phenomenon. Ether waves which are much longer and much shorter than those which illuminate the spectrum certainly exist, and evidence of their existence is easily obtainable. But we cannot see them; they fall upon our eyes without exciting the faintest sensation of light. The visible spectrum is limited solely by the physiological const.i.tution of our organs of vision, and the fact that it begins and ends where it does is, from a physical point of view, a mere accident. The spectrum actually projected upon the screen is in truth much longer than that portion of it which any one can see: it extends for a considerable distance beyond the violet at the one end and beyond the red at the other, these invisible portions being known as the ultra-violet and infra-red regions. People's eyes differ in regard to range of sensibility just as their ears do. I believe the sensibility of my own eyes to be normal, but if I were to indicate the two points where the spectrum appears to me to begin and to end, a great many persons would certainly be inclined to disagree with me and place the boundaries somewhere else. Some, indeed, could see nothing whatever in what appears to most of us to be a brilliant portion of the red.

Again, it is by no means probable that in all animals and insects the limits of vision are the same as they are in man. We might naturally expect that larger and perhaps more coa.r.s.ely constructed eyes than our own would respond to waves of greater average length, while the visual organs of small insects might on the other hand be more sensitive to shorter waves. The point is not one that can be easily settled, because we are unable to cross-examine an animal as to what it sees under different conditions. But Sir John Lubbock, taking advantage of the dislike which ants when in their nests have for light, has proved by a series of very exhaustive and conclusive experiments that these insects are most sensitive to rays which our own eyes cannot perceive at all. That region of the spectrum which appears brightest to the eye of an ant is what we should call a perfectly dark one, lying outside the violet, where the incident waves have a length of less than 1/64000 inch.

As Lord Salisbury said at Oxford, the function of the ether is to undulate, and, in fact, it transports energy from one place to another by wave-motion. Some of its waves, such as those which proceed from an electric-light dynamo, may be thousands of miles in length, others may be shorter than a millionth of an inch, as is perhaps the case with those a.s.sociated with Professor Rontgen's X-rays; but all, so far as is known, are of essentially the same character, differing from one another only as the billows of the Atlantic differ from the ripples on the surface of a pond. No matter how the disturbance is first set up, whether by the sun, or by a dynamo, or by a warm flat-iron, in every case the ether conveys nothing at all but the energy of wave-motion, and when the waves, encountering some material obstacle which does not reflect them, become quenched, their energy takes another form, and some kind of work is done, or heat is generated in the obstacle.

The whole, or at least the greater part, of the energy given up by the waves is in most cases transformed into heat, but under special circ.u.mstances, as, for instance, when the waves fall upon a green leaf or a living eye, a few of them may perform work of an electrical or chemical nature.

The process of the transmission of energy from one body to another by propagation through an intervening medium has long been spoken of as "radiation," and in recent years the same term has been largely employed to denote the energy itself while in the stage of transmission.

"Radiation" in the latter sense--meaning ether wave-energy--includes what is often improperly called light. Light, people say, takes about eight minutes in travelling from the sun to the earth. But while it is on its journey it is not light in the true sense of the word; neither does anything of the nature of light ever start from the sun. Light has no more existence in nature outside a living body than the flavour of onions has; both are merely sensations.

If a boy throws a stone which hits you in the face, you feel a pain; but you do not say that it was a pain which left the boy's hand and travelled through s.p.a.ce from him to you. The stone, instead of causing pain in a sentient being, might have broken a window, or knocked down an apple. Just so, the same radiation which, when it chances to encounter an eye, produces a certain sensation, will produce a chemical decomposition if it falls upon a cabbage, an electrical effect in a selenium cell, or a heating effect in almost anything. Why, then, should it be specially identified with the sensation?

"Radiation" also includes, and is nearly synonymous with, what is often miscalled radiant heat. After what has been already indicated, I need hardly say that there is no such thing as radiant heat. The truth is that the sun or other hot body generates wave-energy in the ether at the expense of some of its own heat, and any distant substance which absorbs a portion of this energy generally (but not necessarily) acquires an equivalent quant.i.ty of heat. The _result_ may be exactly the same as if heat left the hot body and travelled across s.p.a.ce to the substance; but the _process_ is different. It is like sending a sovereign to a friend by a postal order. You part with a sovereign and he receives one, but the piece of paper which goes through the post is not a sovereign. It is strictly correct to say that the sun loses heat by radiation, just as you lose a sovereign by investing it in the purchase of a postal order. But that is not the same thing as saying that the sun radiates heat.

The term "radiation" has the advantage of avoiding any suggestion of the fallacy that there is some essential difference in the nature of the ether-waves which may happen to terminate their respective careers in the production of light or heat or chemical action or something else; but it is, unfortunately, impossible in the present condition of things to use it as freely as one could wish without pedantry, and we must still often speak of light or of heat when radiation would express our meaning with greater accuracy.

Light, then--to use the term unblushingly in its objectionable but well understood sense--has the property of stimulating certain nerves which exist in many living beings, with the result that, in some unknown and probably unknowable manner, a special sensation is called into play--the sensation of luminosity. And in order that the creature may be able not only to perceive light but also to see things, that is, to appreciate the forms of external objects, it is generally provided with an optical apparatus by means of which the incident light is suitably distributed over a large number of independent sensitive elements.

In man and the higher animals the optical apparatus, or eye, consists of a stiff globular sh.e.l.l, having in front an opening provided with a system of lenses, and, at the back of the interior, a delicate perceptive membrane, upon which the transmitted light is received. So much of the light emitted or reflected from an external object as pa.s.ses through the lenses, is distributed by them in such a manner as to form what is called an "image" upon the membrane, every elementary point of the image receiving the light which issues from a corresponding point of the object, and no other. The contrivance evidently bears a close resemblance to a photographic camera, the sensitive plate or film, upon which the picture is projected, being a.n.a.logous to the perceptive membrane.

I am not going to attempt a detailed description of the human eye. It will be sufficient to point out briefly some of its princ.i.p.al features as indicated in the annexed diagrammatic section, Fig. 2.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Fig. 2.--Diagram of the Eye._]

The opening in front of the globe is covered by a slightly protuberant transparent medium C, which is shaped like a small watch-gla.s.s, and on account of its horn-like structure has been named the _cornea_. The s.p.a.ce between the cornea C and the body marked L is filled with a watery liquid A, known as the aqueous humour: this liquid with its curved surfaces const.i.tutes a meniscus lens, convex on the outer side and concave on the inner. Then comes the biconvex _crystalline lens_ L, an elastic gelatinous-looking solid, which is easily distorted by pressure. The convexity of this lens can be varied by the action of a surrounding muscle M M, and in this way the focus is adjusted for objects at different distances from the eye. When the muscle is relaxed and the lens in its natural condition, the curvature of its surfaces is such that a sharp image is formed of objects distant about forty feet and upwards. When by an effort of will, the muscle is contracted, the lens becomes more convex, and distinct pictures can thus be focussed of things which are only a few inches away. This process of adjustment by muscular effort is technically known as "accommodation."

The remainder of the globe is filled with the so-called _vitreous body_ V, which derives its name from its fancied resemblance to liquid gla.s.s: it might perhaps be more properly likened to a thin colourless jelly. The vitreous body plays a part in the refraction of the light.

The perceptive membrane, or _retina_ R R, which lines rather more than half the interior of the eye-ball, is an exceedingly complex structure.

Though its average thickness is less than 1/100 inch it is known to consist of nine distinct layers, most of which are marvels of minute intricacy. Of these layers I shall notice only two, the so-called _bacillary layer_, which is in immediate contact with the inner coating of the eye-ball, and the _fibrous layer_, or layer of optic nerve fibres, which is only separated from the vitreous body by a thin protective film.

The bacillary layer (from _bacillum_, a wand) consists of a vast a.s.semblage of little elongated bodies called _rods_ and _cones_, which are placed side by side and set perpendicularly to the surfaces of the retina, or in other words, radially to the eye-ball. Let us try to make the arrangement clear by an ill.u.s.tration.

Imagine a small portion of the inner surface of the eye-ball, one-tenth of an inch square, to be magnified 2000 diameters (four million times), and let the enlarged area be represented by the floor of a room 17 feet square. Procure a quant.i.ty of cedar pencils, and set them on the floor in an upright position and very close to one another. It will be found that the number of pencils required to fill the s.p.a.ce will be about half-a-million. To make the a.n.a.logy more complete, let some of the pencils be sharpened to a long tapering point at their lower ends, the greater number remaining uncut, just as received from the manufacturers.

Neglecting details which are immaterial for our present purpose, we may regard the uncut pencils as representing upon an enormously magnified scale the rods of the retina, and the pointed ones the cones.

The flat upper ends of the pencils may be painted in different uniform colours, and arranged so as to form a large picture in mosaic, and if this is looked at from such a distance that its image on the retina is a tenth of an inch square (which will be the case when the picture is about forty yards away) all possibility of distinguishing the separate elements which compose it will be lost, and the picture will seem to be a perfectly continuous one.

Although the light which enters the eye cannot reach the rods and cones until it has traversed all the other layers of the retina, yet these intervening layers, being transparent, offer little obstruction to its pa.s.sage, and it can hardly be doubted that the rods and cones are the special organs upon which light exerts its action, the picture focussed upon their ends being in truth an exceedingly fine mosaic.

From every separate element of the mosaic--from every single rod and cone--there proceeds a slender transparent filament: all these make their way through the intermediate layers of the retina, without, as is believed, any break of functional continuity, and emerge near its internal surface; here they bend over at right angles, and the thousands of filaments form a tangle which lines the inside of the eye like a fine network, and const.i.tute the layer of optic nerve-fibres already referred to.

The filaments, or nerve-fibres, do not however terminate within the eye; they all pa.s.s through the hole marked N in the figure, and thence, in the form of a many-stranded cable, const.i.tuting the _optic nerve_, they are led to the brain, to which each individual fibre is separately attached.

If, therefore, what I have said is true--and, though it has not, I believe, been all rigorously proved, yet the evidence in its support is exceedingly cogent--it follows that every one of the mult.i.tude of rods and cones has its own independent line of communication with the brain. The mind, which is mysteriously connected with the brain, is thus afforded the means of localising all the points of luminous excitation relatively to one another, and furnished with data for estimating the form of the object from which the light proceeds.

There are two small regions of the retina which are of special interest.

One of them lies just over the opening N where the optic nerve enters.

Here it is evident that there can be no rods and cones, their place being wholly occupied by strands of nerve-fibre. Now it is remarkable that this spot is totally insensitive to light.

The other interesting portion is situated opposite the middle of the front opening, and is marked by a small yellow patch, in the centre of which is a depression or pit, which is shown in an exaggerated form at F, and is called the _fovea_. It has been ascertained that the depression is due partly to the absence of the layer of nerve-fibres, which are here bent aside out of their natural course, and partly to a local reduction in the thickness of some of the intermediate retinal layers. This spot, being at the centre of the field of vision, occupies a position of great importance, and the evident purpose of the superficial depression is to allow the light to reach the underlying bacillary layer with as little obstruction as possible. It is noteworthy that the bacillary layer beneath the yellow spot is composed entirely of cones, the rods, which elsewhere are in excess, being altogether wanting.