The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1904-01-09
SOUND FROM ETHER
A-Ray Tube Emits Musical Note After
Being Excited.
- New York Herald.

New York Herald.
FOLLOWING the announcement in
London few days ago that an Eng
lish experimenter found that his
vacuum tube emitted light for days
after 1t had been disconnected from
his battery, j. w. Hammer, an cleo
trical engineering expert of this city,
declared last night that he had OBJ
tanned sounds from a vacuum tube
much in the same way.
In his laboratory in the presence
of former Assistant Attorney General
James M. Beck and several other per-
sonal friends, Mr.. Hammer set his au-
| tomato music box to work. For five
minutes at at time a low murmuring
sound like Al on the musical scale
came from big vacuum tube that
duction coil and laid on pasteboard
box filled with excelsior. If one of
the auditors spoke the round ran up
into the treble, but soon sank to its
regular rhythm.
Mr.. Hammer said the only explana-
ton he could give was that when the
anticathode disk in the tube was
broken from the excessive lombard
ment of the X-rays the platinum up
per surface became separated from
the nickel bottom surface, and when
the disk was heated red-hot the two
surfaces trembled in unison with the
etheric waves in the surrounding at
mosphere and emitted a strong single
note.
Mr.. Hammer has been experiment.
Ing for several years with the vary
ing phases of radio activity, and was
experimenting in his laboratory day
or two ago when he thought he had
ruined a Queen self-regulating vacu-
UNI tube because the anticathode disk
was burned thru as If pierced with
coarse needle.
After disconnecting it he laid it
down on a pasteboard box filled with
excelsior, in which it was to be sent
to the factory. Suddenly he heard a
low note in the room and traced it to
the discarded tube. He called his
timed the duration Of the murmur.
After five minutes had elapsed Mr..
Hammer reconnected the tube with
his induction coil and reheated the
perforated disk for period of twen-
ty seconds. Then he disconnected it
and laid it on box. This time the
disk had responded to the heat more
readily or for some other reason kept
up the sound for fifteen minutes, A
third relocating and disconnection re-
suited in hearing the sound plainly
twenty or thirty feet away for seven
and half minutes.
He said last night: 'tThe plate on
which the cathode stream inside the
tube impinges was perforated. This
spoiled not only the focusing quail
tiles of the tube, but the occluded
gases driven out of the platinum
changed the degree of the vacuum
inside the tube. I was about to dis
card the tube when the strange
sound struck MY ear, and, placing NV
hand on the glass, I found it was
vibrating violently.
Evidently the unusual conditions
in the damaged x-ray tube made It
peculiarly sensitive to the sound
waves in the surrounding ether. Nine.
Curie observed the same sort of phe-
nomenon in connection with expert
ments with radium. Not that it gave
forth heat and light indefinitely with
out loss of bulk or weight spec-
troscopically, for that would contra
dict all ideas Of the conservation of
energy; but that the light waves in
the ether stimulated the radium so
that the radium gave forth its won
derful luminosity. Edison, Hiram
Maxim, Lord Kelvin and others have
since agreed with Nine. Curie that If
was impossible for any substance to
store UP and give out light and heat
interminably without suffering some
loss of weight or bulk