Evening star., 1897-03-06
A GIANT STORAGE BATTERY.
Most Powerful In the World to study
the Nature of the ROentHen Rays.

the nature OF the HOent8en Rays.
Among the first scientists in this country
to experiment with the Roentgen rays was
Prof. John Trowbridge of Harvard Uni
versity, whose early successes In this new
field of investigation attracted wide atten-
ton. The more Prof. Trowbridge studied
these strange phenomena the more he be-
came convinced that. the ordinary methods
of producing the Roentgen rays were un
satisfactory and not calculated to give the
best results. AS every one knows, these
rays for the new photography are excited
by passing current from some kind of an
electrical machine through a glass bulb
fl ON which the air has been previously ex
hauSted to a great extent in other words,
through what is commonly known as a
vacuum tube or a Crookes tube The ma
chiEes usually employed for sending this
current are the induction COIL the large
static machine, or the Tesla or Thompson
coli, the last two used in connection with
'step-up transformers The objection to
all of these machines is that they furnish
an irregular supply of electricity, and in
some instances lead to a confusion of ef-
fects; that is, make it difficult to deter
mine which are caused by the Roentgen
rays and which by the machine.
1t became, therefore. highly desirable to
have a source of electricity which should
be at once steady and possessed of suffi-
ciently high tension for the work in hand.
Casting about him for something of this
sort. Professor Trowbridge hit upon the
storage battery as best meeting the re-
quirements of the case. His observation
| of the working of high tension accumula-
| tor in the experimental laboratory of the
American Bell Telephone Company led him
to hope that such an accumulator a
| larger scale would satisfy his needs, and he
accordingly set about the construction of
| such an accumulator in his laboratory at
Harvard This was several months ago.
| and It is only after weeks of effort that
| the professors object has been attained
storage battery in the world, a battery
! twenty times as large as the one from
which he took model, or containing 10000
cells, while the one in the telephone la
| boratory contained only 500
Later on, in talking with Professor Trow-
| bridge himself l understood the necessity
| of this enormous voltage, for experiments
| in this laboratory have demonstrated that
| when an electric discharge is passed
| through a Crookes' tube the Roentgen rays
do not make their appearance, ever so
| family, until the tension of the current
| amounts to 10000 volts, and, in order to
| study the rays properly. It is necessary to
! have a much higher tension. The professor
| said that his purpose In using this battery
for producing Roentgen rays is not so
| much to study the Photographic effects of
| the rays as to investigate their nature, and
| their relations to other manifestations of
| light and electricity. He also proposes to
| passing the Roentgen discharges through
| tubes containing various gases In a pure
| state, hydrogen, argon, etc, and looks for
| important results to come from these OBJ
| servations. He expects, for instance, to
| draw important conclusions to the quail
ity of the light that comes to us from the
| stars.
One point of interest to students of the
4 Roentgen rays has been clearly demon
| strated in the Harvard laboratory, namely,
| that 1t Is impossible to produce these rays,
| as has been claimed by some experiment
ers, with the ordinary Edison incandescent
lamp. The trouble with this lamp is that
it does not contain sufficiently high vacu-
um to get Roentgen effects of any value,
indeed, the high vacuum is of such para
mount Importance in all work of this sort
| that Professor Trowbridge has imported
from Europe an elaborate and highly eff
cient air pump, with which he proposes in
the future to make his own Crookes' tubes
MICROBES ESSENTIAL TO LIFEs
| Conclusive Experiment of Two Berlin
PrOfess0rs..
i The important part played by bacteria
| and other microbes In the economy of life
as Is indicated by their breaking up tissues
and bringing about general organic disso-
Citations, has suggested to some naturalists
that their presence was an absolute nee
essity to the condition Of life among mos
of the higher animals, and the late NJ
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