The Romance of Modern Invention Part 14

Other authorities have other theories. We may mention the view that X represents the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum, caused by vibrations of such extreme rapidity as to be imperceptible to the human eye, just as sounds of extremely high pitch are inaudible to the ear. This theory is to a certain extent upheld by the behaviour of the photographic plate, which is least affected by the colours of the spectrum at the red end and most by those at the violet end. A photographer is able to use red or orange light in his dark room because his plates cannot "see" them, though he can; whereas the reverse would be the case with X-rays. This ultra-violet theory claims for X-rays a rate of ether vibration of trillions of waves per second.

An alternative theory is to relegate the rays to the gap in the scale of ether-waves between heatwaves and light-waves. But this does not explain any more satisfactorily than the other the peculiar phenomenon of non-refraction.

The apparatus employed in X-photography consists of a Crookes' tube of a special type, a powerful shocking or induction coil, a fluorescent screen and photographic plates and appliances for developing, &c., besides a supply of high-pressure electricity derived from the main, a small dynamo or batteries.

A Crookes' tube is four to five inches in diameter, globular in its middle portion, but tapering away towards each end. Through one extremity is led a platinum wire, terminating in a saucer-shaped platinum plate an inch or so across. At the focus of this, the negative terminal, is fixed a platinum plate at an angle to the path of the rays so as to deflect them through the side of the tube. The positive terminal penetrates the gla.s.s at one side. The tube contains, as we have seen, a very tiny residue of air. If this were entirely exhausted the action of the tube would cease; so that some tubes are so arranged that when rarefaction becomes too high the pa.s.sage of an electrical current through small bars of chemicals, whose ends project through the sides of the tube, liberates gas from the bars in sufficient quant.i.ty to render the tube active again.

When the Ruhmkorff induction coil is joined to the electric circuit a series of violent discharges of great rapidity occur between the tube terminals, resembling in their power the discharge of a Leyden jar, though for want of a dense atmosphere the brilliant spark has been replaced by a glow and brush-light in the tube. The coil is of large dimensions, capable of pa.s.sing a spark across an air-gap of ten to twelve inches. It will perhaps increase the reader's respect for X-rays to learn that a coil of proper size contains upwards of thirteen miles of wire; though indeed this quant.i.ty is nothing in comparison with the 150 miles wound on the huge inductorium formerly exhibited at the London Polytechnic.

If we were invited to an X-ray demonstration we should find the operator and his apparatus in a darkened room. He turns on the current and the darkness is broken by a velvety glow surrounding the negative terminal, which gradually extends until the whole tube becomes clothed in a green phosph.o.r.escence. A sharply-defined line athwart the tube separates the shadowed part behind the receiving plate at the negative focus--now intensely hot--from that on which the reflected rays fall directly.

One of us is now invited to extend a hand close to the tube. The operator then holds on the near side of the hand his fluorescent screen, which is nothing more than a framework supporting a paper smeared on one side with platino-cyanide of barium, a chemical that, in common with several others, was discovered by Salvioni of Perugia to be sensitive to the rays and able to make them visible to the human eye. The value of the screen to the X-radiographer is that of the ground-gla.s.s plate to the ordinary photographer, as it allows him to see exactly what things are before the sensitised plate is brought into position, and in fact largely obviates the necessity for making a permanent record.

The screen shows clearly and in full detail all the bones of the hand--so clearly that one is almost irresistibly drawn to peep behind to see if a real hand is there. One of us now extends an arm and the screen shows us the _ulna_ and the _radius_ working round each other, now both visible, now one obscuring the other. On presenting the body to the course of the rays a remarkable shadow is cast on to the screen. The spinal column and the ribs; the action of the heart and lungs are seen quite distinctly. A deep breath causes the movement of a dark ma.s.s--the liver. There is no privacy in presence of the rays.

The enlarged heart, the diseased lung, the ulcerated liver betrays itself at once. In a second of time the phosph.o.r.escent screen reveals what might baulk medical examination for months.

If a photographic slide containing a dry-plate be subst.i.tuted for the focusing-screen, the rays soon penetrate any covering in which the plate may be wrapped to protect it from ordinary light rays. The process of taking a shadowgraph may therefore be conducted in broad daylight, which is under certain conditions a great advantage, though the sensitiveness of plates exposed to Rontgen rays entails special care being taken of them when they are not in use. In the early days of X-radiography an exposure of some minutes was necessary to secure a negative, but now, thanks to the improvements in the tubes, a few seconds is often sufficient.

The discovery of the X-rays is a great discovery, because it has done much to promote the n.o.blest possible cause, the alleviation of human suffering. Not everybody will appreciate a more rapid mode of telegraphy, or a new method of spinning yarn, but the dullest intellect will give due credit to a scientific process that helps to save life and limb. Who among us is not liable to break an arm or leg, or suffer from internal injuries invisible to the eye? Who among us therefore should not be thankful on reflecting that, in event of such a mishap, the X-rays will be at hand to show just what the trouble is, how to deal with it, and how far the healing advances day by day? The X-ray apparatus is now as necessary for the proper equipment of a hospital as a camera for that of a photographic studio.

It is especially welcome in the hospitals which accompany an army into the field. Since May 1896 many a wounded soldier has had reason to bless the patient work that led to the discovery at Wurzburg. The Greek war, the war in Cuba, the Tirah campaign, the Egyptian campaign, and the war in South Africa, have given a quick succession of fine opportunities for putting the new photography to the test. There is now small excuse for the useless and agonising probings that once added to the dangers and horrors of the military hospital. Even if the X-ray equipment, by reason of its weight, cannot conveniently be kept at the front of a rapidly moving army, it can be set up in the "advanced" or "base" hospitals, whither the wounded are sent after a first rough dressing of their injuries. The medical staff there subject their patients to the searching rays, are able to record the exact position of a bullet or sh.e.l.l-fragment, and the damage it has done; and by promptly removing the intruder to greatly lessen its power to harm.

The Rontgen ray has added to the surgeon's armoury a powerful weapon.

Its possibilities are not yet fully known, but there can be no doubt that it marks a new epoch in surgical work. And for this reason Professor Rontgen deserves to rank with Harvey, the discoverer of the blood's circulation; with Jenner, the father of vaccination; and with Sir James Young Simpson, the first doctor to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DARK.

Strange as it seems to take photographs with invisible rays, it is still stranger to be able to affect sensitised plates without apparently the presence of any kind of rays.

Professor W. J. Russell, Vice-President of the Royal Society of London, has discovered that many substances have the power of impressing their outlines automatically on a sensitive film, if the substance be placed in a dark cupboard in contact with, or very close to a dry-plate.

After some hours, or it may be days, development of the plate will reveal a distinct impression of the body in question. Dr. Russell experimented with wood, metal, leaves, drawings, printed matter, lace.

Zinc proved to be an unusually active agent. A plate of the metal, highly polished and then ruled with patterns, had at the end of a few days imparted a record of every scratch and mark to the plate. And not only will zinc impress itself, but it affects substances which are not themselves active, throwing shadowgraphs on to the plate. This was demonstrated with samples of lace, laid between a plate and a small sheet of bright zinc; also with a skeleton leaf. It is curious that while the interposition of thin films of celluloid, gutta-percha, vegetable parchment, and gold-beater's skin--all inactive--between the zinc and the plate has no obstructive effect, a plate of thin gla.s.s counteracts the action of the zinc. Besides zinc, nickel, aluminium, pewter, lead, and tin among the metals influence a sensitised plate.

Another totally different substance, printer's ink, has a similar power; or at least some printer's ink, for Professor Russell found that different samples varied greatly in their effects. What is especially curious, the printed matter on _both sides_ of a piece of newspaper appeared on the plate, and that the effect proceeded from the ink and not from any rays pa.s.sing from beyond it is proved by the fact that the type came out _dark_ in the development, whereas if it had been a case of shadowgraphy, the ink by intercepting rays would have produced _white_ letters. Professor Russell has also shown that modern writing ink is incapable of producing an impression unaided, but that on the other hand paper written on a hundred years ago or a printed book centuries old will, with the help of zinc, yield a picture in which even faded and uncertain characters appear quite distinctly. This opens the way to a practical use of the discovery, in the deciphering of old and partly obliterated ma.n.u.scripts.

A very interesting experiment may be made with that useful possession--a five-pound note. Place the note printed side next to the plate, and the printing appears dark; but insert the note between a zinc sheet and the plate, its back being this time towards the sensitised surface, and the printing appears _white_; and the zinc, after contact with the printed side, will itself yield a picture of the inscription as though it had absorbed some virtue from the note!

As explanation of this paradoxical dark photography--or whatever it is--two theories may be advanced. The one--favoured by Professor Russell--is that all "active" substances give off _vapours_ able to act on a photographic plate. In support of this may be urged the fact that the interposition of gla.s.s prevents the making of dark pictures.

But on the other hand it must be remembered that celluloid and sheet-gelatine, also air-tight substances, are able to store up light and to give it out again. It is well known among photographers that to allow sunlight to fall on the inside of a camera is apt to have a "fogging" effect on a plate that is exposed in the camera afterwards, though the greatest care be taken to keep all external light from the plate. But here the gla.s.s again presents a difficulty, for if this were a case of reflected light, gla.s.s would evidently be _less_ obstructive than opaque vegetable parchment or gutta-percha.

SOLAR MOTORS.

One day George Stephenson and a friend stood watching a train drawn by one of his locomotives.

"What moves that train?" asked Stephenson.

"The engine," replied his friend.

"And what moves the engine?"

"The steam."

"And what produces the steam?"

"Coal."

"And what produces coal?"

This last query nonplussed his friend, and Stephenson himself replied, "The sun."

The "bottled sunshine" that drove the locomotive was stored up millions of years ago in the dense forests then covering the face of the globe. Every day vegetation was built by the sunbeams, and in the course of ages this growth was crushed into fossil form by the pressure of high-piled rock and debris. To-day we cast "black diamonds" into our grates and furnaces, to call out the warmth and power that is a legacy from a period long prior to the advent of fire-loving man, often forgetful of its real source.

We see the influence of the sun more directly in the motions of wind and water. Had not the sun's action deposited snow and rain on the uplands of the world, there would be no roaring waterfall, no rushing torrent, no smooth-flowing stream. But for the sun heating the atmosphere unequally, there would not be that rushing of cool air to replace hot which we know as wind.

We press Sol into our service when we burn fuel; our wind-mills and water-mills make him our slave. Of late years many prophets have arisen to warn us that we must not be too lavish of our coal; that the time is not so far distant, reckoning by centuries, when the coal-seams of the world will be worked out and leave our descendants dest.i.tute of what plays so important a part in modern life. Now, though waste is unpardonable, and the care for posterity praiseworthy, there really seems to be no good reason why we should alarm ourselves about the welfare of the people of the far future. Even if coal fails, the winds and the rivers will be there, and the huge unharnessed energy of the tides, and the sun himself is ready to answer appeals for help, if rightly shaped. He does not demand the prayers of Persian fire-worshippers, but rather the scientific gathering of his good gifts.

Place your hand on a roof lying square to the summer sun, and you will find it too hot for the touch. Concentrate a beam of sunshine through a small burning-gla.s.s. How fierce is the small glowing focal spot that makes us draw our hands suddenly away! Suppose now a large gla.s.s many feet across bending several square yards of sun rays to a point, and at that point a boiler. The boiler would develop steam, and the steam might be led into cylinders and forced to drudge for us.

Do many of us realise the enormous energy of a hot summer's day? The heat falling in the tropics on a single square foot of the earth's surface has been estimated as the equivalent of one-third of a horse-power. The force of Niagara itself would on this basis be matched by the sunshine streaming on to a square mile or so. A steamship might be propelled by the heat that scorches its decks.

For many centuries inventors have tried to utilise this huge waste power. We all know how, according to the story, Archimedes burnt up the Roman ships besieging his native town, Syracuse, by concentrating on them the sun heat cast from hundreds of mirrors. This story is less probable than interesting as a proof that the ancients were aware of the sun's power. The first genuine solar machine was the work of Ericsson, the builder of the _Monitor_. He focused sun heat on a boiler, which gave the equivalent of one horse-power for every hundred square feet of mirrors employed. This was not what engineers would call a "high efficiency," a great deal of heat being wasted, but it led the way to further improvements.

In America, especially in the dry, arid regions, where fuel is scarce and the sun shines pitilessly day after day, all the year round, sun-catchers of various types have been erected and worked successfully. Dr. William Calver, of Washington, has built in the barren wastes of Arizona huge frames of mirrors, travelling on circular rails, so that they may be brought to face the sun at all hours between sunrise and sunset. Dr. Calver employs no less than 1600 mirrors. As each of these mirrors develops 10-15 degrees of heat it is obvious, after an appeal to simple arithmetic, that the united efforts of these reflectors should produce the tremendous temperature 16,000-24,000 degrees, which, expressed comparatively, means the paltry 90 degrees in the shade beneath which we grow restive multiplied hundreds of times. Hitherto the greatest known heat had been that of the arc of the electric lamp, in which the incandescent particles between pole and pole attain 6000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The combined effect of the burning mirrors is irresistible. They can, we are told, in a few moments reduce Russian iron to the consistency of warmed wax, though it mocks the heat of many blast-furnaces. They will bake bricks twenty times as rapidly as any kiln, and the bricks produced are not the friable blocks which a mason chips easily with his trowel, but bodies so hard as to scratch case-hardened steel.

There are at work in California sun-motors of another design. The reader must imagine a huge conical lamp-shade turned over on to its smaller end, its inner surface lined with nearly 1800 mirrors 2 feet long and 3 inches broad, the whole supported on a light iron framework, and he will have a good idea of the apparatus used on the Pasadena ostrich farm. The machine is arranged _in meridian_, that is, at right angles to the path of the sun, which it follows all day long by the agency of clockwork. In the focus of the mirrors is a boiler, 13 feet 6 inches long, coated with black, heat-absorbing substances.

This boiler holds over 100 gallons of water, and being fed automatically will raise steam untended all the day through. The steam is led by pipes to an engine working a pump, capable of delivering 1400 gallons per minute.

The cheapness of the apparatus in proportion to its utility is so marked that, in regions where sunshine is almost perpetual, the solar motor will in time become as common as are windmills and factory chimneys elsewhere. If the heat falling on a few square yards of mirror lifts nearly 100,000 gallons of water an hour, there is indeed hope for the Sahara, the Persian Desert, Arabia, Mongolia, Mexico, Australia. That is to say, if the water under the earth be in these parts as plentiful as the sunshine above it. The effect of water on the most unpromising soil is marvellous. Already in Algeria the French have reclaimed thousands of square miles by scientific irrigation. In Australia huge artesian wells have made habitable for man and beast millions of acres that were before desert.

It is only a just retribution that the sun should be harnessed and compelled to draw water for tracts to which he has so long denied it.

The sun-motor is only just entering on its useful career, and at present we can but dream of the great effects it may have on future civilisation. Yet its principle is so simple, so scientific, and so obvious, that it is easy to imagine it at no far distant date a dangerous rival to King Coal himself. To quarry coal from the bowels of the earth and transform it into heat, is to traverse two sides of a triangle, the third being to use the sunshine of the pa.s.sing hour.

LIQUID AIR.

Among common phenomena few are more interesting than the changes undergone by the substance called water. Its usual form is a liquid.

Under the influence of frost it becomes hard as iron, brittle as gla.s.s. At the touch of fire it pa.s.ses into unsubstantial vapour.