Abstract
HISSING is one of the few phenomena connected with the electric arc with which every one is more or less familiar. In the old days the sudden, almost complete, extinction of the light of an arc-lamp, and the loud hiss accompanying its relighting, was so common an occurrence that it was supposed by the lay mind to form part and parcel of the working of the “electric light,” and led to a lively prejudice against that light on the part of the public. In these days of enclosed arcs and of better constructed lamps, such little interludes are of far less frequent occurrence; but it is as important as ever, from a scientific point of view, to discover their origin, and even from the practical side anything which points to a remedy for this grave defect in arc-lighting cannot fail to be of interest.
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The Reason for the Hissing of the Electric Arc1. Nature 60, 282–286 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060282a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060282a0