Abstract
LONDON
Physical Society, April 13.—Prof. R. B. Clifton, vice-president, in the chair.—The following candidates were elected Members of the Society:—W. Campbell, R. W. F. Harrison, Rev. T. N. Hutchinson, M.A., B. W. Richardson, M.B., F.R.S.—The Secretary read a paper by Messrs. J. Nixon and A. W. Heaviside, describing their experiments on the mechanical transmission of speech through wires or other substances, to which Mr. Preece had referred at a previous meeting of the Society. After describing a number of experiments in which metallic discs soldered on to the ends of the conducting wires were employed, they went on to enumerate the more successful experiments in which wooden discs were mainly employed. The first actual transmission of speech was effected by placing the belly of a violin against the receiving end of the wire, when every syllable spoken was distinctly audible. Very good results were obtained by employing mouth-and-ear pieces, formed as in a telephone, the disc being replaced by thin wooden discs, six inches in diameter, and a No. 4 wire was found to be most satisfactory. On suspending a length of this wire in such a manner that it had no rigid attachments, it was ascertained that 120 yards is the limit through which a conversation can be carried on.—Capt. Abney, F.R.S., described the method he adopted for photographing the least refrangible end of the spectrum. He pointed out that it is impossible, with the ordinary sensitive salts employed in the usual way, to photograph further than the Fraunhofer line E, though by a preliminary exposure to light of a Daguerrotype plate, Draper was able to photograph beyond the extreme limit of visibility in the red end of the spectrum. This method, however gave what is known as a reversed picture, the lights and shades being transposed, besides requiring a lengthened exposure. It enabled Becquerel to photograph the spectrum in its natural colours, and later St. Victor obtained coloured images of coloured cloths. The object of Capt. Abney had been to obtain unreversed pictures of this portion of the spectrum; in other words, to obtain a compound that would be similarly sensitive to the red and the blue components of white light. Such a compound he had at last obtained by what he termed weighting silver bromide with resin, and now he obtains it by causing the molecules of silver bromide to weight themselves. He showed an ordinary bromide of silver plate, and the colour of the transmitted light was of a ruddy tint, showing absorption of the blue rays; another film was shown containing weighted bromide of silver, which transmitted blue light and absorbed the red. Photographic plates prepared with the latter compound he showed were sensitive to the red and ultra-red waves of light, and he threw on the screen photographs of the spectrum from the line C to a wave-length of 10,000, the ultra-red showing remarkable groupings of lines. He further showed that by friction the blue film was changed to the red, and in that state was not sensitive to the lower part of the spectrum. These photographs were taken by means of a diffraction grating, and Capt. Abney demonstrated Fraunhofer's method of separating the various orders of spectra produced by it. He then explained that recently he had elucidated the reason of the reversal of Draper's pictures by the least refrangible end of the spectrum. He finds that it is accelerated by exposing the plates in weak oxidising solutions, such as those of hydroxyl, bichromate of potash, permanganate of potash, and nitric acid, or exposure to ozone. The red rays, in other words, seemed to oxidise the photographic image, and to render it incapable of development. —Mr. H. Bauermathen exhibited some paper models illustrative of the disposition of the planes of symmetry in crystals. These included octants of the sphere with inclosed cube and octahedron faces pointed into their corresponding hexakis-octohedral faces, a cubic skeleton built up from nine planes of symmetry with a removable outer shell, and a system of axial planes of an unsymmetrical mineral inclosing a solid nucleus contained between three parallel pairs of planes. They were constructed for the purpose of showing popularly the difference between planes of symmetry and other diametral planes by laying upon them a small mirror or plate of mica, when in the first case the inclosed nucleus gave a symmetrical image corresponding in position to the plane immediately behind the mirror, but in the second a broken image is produced.—Dr. Guthrie exhibited the arrangement of apparatus he had employed, in conjunction with his brother, to ascertain the effect of heat on the transpiration of gases. The main difficulty connected with the research was the securing of an absolutely constant pressure on the air operated upon. This was secured by inserting into the neck of the vessel which served as an air-chamber a tube turned up at its inner end and terminating externally by a small funnel; as the tube was kept constantly full of water, the funnel overflowing, a pressure represented by the difference between the heights of these levels was maintained. After passing through a series of drying tubes the air traversed the (U-shaped) capillary tube in a beaker containing water of known temperature, and was finally received in an inverted tube contained in an overflowing dish of water. Among other results it was found that the resistance of a tube is the same as that of its several portions, and if t be the time occupied, T the absolute temperature, p1 p2 the pressures, and α and β constants, they find that—
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES . Nature 18, 163–164 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/018163a0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/018163a0