The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-03-14

smile on his experiments, will some
day base an ether system of light pro-
duction on his little lamp. He is seek
ing to devise some method for oscillat-
ing the ether so as TO produce lght.
In case of success his lamp would be-
come an object of great interest. Great
obstacles lie in the way and for the
sake of the uninitiated a little eXpiana-
ton may be necessary.
The man who maintains that the
sun do move will declare that it is
also the source of light But the mod
ern scientist while acquieScing in the
fact. will add that light is a condition
of the surrounding ether which may
on occasion be disturbed or regulated
so as to produce a concentration OF
! illumination at a certain point. This
point may be a Puluj lamp or some
other agent, il matters not just now.
I The object to be sought, is the method
/ of concentration. Light travels at the
rate of 1885, 900 miles a second. In trav-
/ cling at this great speed the ether or
atmosphere which conveys the light
! is vibrated up and down, sideways and
! crossWise at the rate of many trllllon
oscillations per second. Thus it not
! only goes forward at great speed but
/ it also vibrates in its passage. To make
light of this nature it would there
! fore be necessary to cause the ethe.
I
/ fessor Lodge estimates that to produce
ether waves one metre in length would
require 300 900, 600 oscillations per sec
ond. Now when a Leyden jar IS dis
charged of its electricity, the latter
disturbs the ether surrounding the jar
and carves it into waves which travel
away into space with a velocity of $780,
COO miles per second, the same velocity
as that of light. But the oscillatory
power is not sufficient to produce light
Here a discrepancy creepS in. Again
quoting Professor Lodge, it may be
well to point out that "a common pint
Leyden jar discharging through palr
of tongs may start a system of ether
waves no longer than about 10 or ~
metres: and its rate Of oscillation will
be something like 100000 per second.
A tiny thimble sized jar overtioWlng
its edge may propagate waves only
about two or three feet long.
1t will thus be seen that the rate(ot
electrical oscillation capable or belnS
produced by apparatus now obtalnable
Is not sufficient to cause an appearance
of sustained light Oscillators have
been made with a capacity for gene
rating ether waves 1900 kilometres or
120O miles long, but the rate of their
oscillation Q57 complete swings per
second is not sufficient for practlcai
purposes The object aimed at then
by scientists is to produce an oscllla-
ton of electrical waves which will equal
the oscillation of the ether when
wrought up to light giving pitch.
HOW TO HARNESS THE ETHER.
It is the intention of Puluj to bridge
over part of the intervening zap ny
means of certain chemical inlplo owe
ments in his lamp. In a recent lee
ture he stated that Hertzieu rays or
electrical oscillations generated by
Leyden Jar discharges, varied from L
600 600 to 10000, 900 per second, accord
ing to the size of the JAR but that TINS
would have to be increased to O,OOO,-
600 600. 600 flour hundred trillions) oscll-
lations per second before they would
become visible as red light. Some con-
ception of what this means may be
had by remembering that tuning
fork vibrating at the rate of 1000 os-
citations per second, would be COM
PEELED to vibrate 1900 years in order 10
encompass this number of oscillations.
There is therefore, something of
task in store for the scientists who eX-
pect to harness the ether and make it
produce light. Puluj says that the
pulsations of electric rays become more
rapid as the metallic coating OF the
Leyden jar gets smaller. That is, the
discharge from very thin coating
will produce a greater number of oS-
citations than one from a thicker
coating Calculations show that if
the coating could be made as small as
the material molecules of the atmos-
phere the oscillations would reach
many billions per second. To produce
this extremely thin coating is the
great problem. for if this molecular
film could discharge its electricity in