MECHANISM OF THE ELECTRIC SPARK

Abstract

ALTHOUGH this interesting book bears the copyright date of 1941 at the Stanford Press, it has only recently been available in Great Britain, and will be regarded as an important supplement to Prof. Loeb's treatise “Fundamental Processes of Electrical Discharges in Gases” (1939). The reason for the appearance of a supplement to a very modern book of such comprehensiveness is to be found in the discovery by an Englishman, one of the authors, J. M. Meek, of a simple condition or criterion, which, applied to Prof. Loeb's qualitative streamer theory of spark discharge, converted an interesting speculation into a quantitative theory of great power. Dr. Meek (formerly of the University of Liverpool and the Research Department of the Metropolitan-Vickers Company) studied under Prof. Loeb with a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship, and there developed the conception and mathematical argument which has led to the satisfactory explanation and correlation of many inexplicable, apparently unrelated phenomena of the spark discharge.

The Mechanism of the Electric Spark

By Prof. Leonard B. Loeb John M. Meek. Pp. xiii + 188. (Stanford University, Calif.: Stanford University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 3.50 dollars.