Abstract
WE have to go back only to 1800, to W. Herschel's discovery that beyond the red end of the sun's prismatic spectrum there is something capable of warming the bulb of a thermometer, to find the germ of a method which, through its contributions to our knowledge of molecular structure, is beginning to be of much importance both to chemistry and to physics. Herschel's discovery was accompanied by an error-that the energy maximum of the spectrum lay also outside the red-though this probably made it even more effective in stimulating the curiosity and imagination of contemporary men of science. In spite of this interest, for the rest of the century progress was slow, and this period is taken up first with the need of proving that the new rays are nothing other than invisible light and obey exactly the same laws; and then with the task of mapping the new region, to find out if and how the radiation is absorbed by matter.
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CHILDS, W., JAHN, H. Infra-Red Spectra and the Structure of Molecules. Nature 145, 646–649 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145646a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145646a0