Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1913-10-26

Nicholson was able to tell the Frenchmen:
Take the length of the red radiation from
cadmium vapOr in vacuum through which an
electric spark is passed. Multiply it by two
million and a fracton-giving the exact fig
ures-and you will have your metre. If some
body should steal your metre of platinum, or il
an unexpected vOlcanO should burst out and
melt it, you could get from the cadmium ray of
light correctly measured, the same result as
you got by all the millions you spent measur-
lng-Or trying to measure-the earth's circum-
ference"
You may, like the gentleman eating the hip
p0potamus in this picture, be very little inter-
ested in the length of ray of light from the
vapOr of cadmium. But you might be inter-
ested in marvellous exactnpss
Some French chemists, following Michelson's
experiments, to make sure that he was right
and to see if they could not improve upon
them. announced that their experiments coin
cided with his within one ten-miIli0nth part
AS the cadmium light ray is only the twO-milI-
1Onth part of a metre or French yard, this
means that MichelsOns measurement is accu-
rate to within one ten-milIionth part of the
twO-milliOnth part of a yard-which. i'm the
LANGUAGE of our day, is "sOme accuracy"
We could tell you many other extraordinary
things that are done year after year in the great
home of knowledge at Chicago and others like
1t throughout the land-Of Micheson's investi-
CATION of ''the reality of notion" his measure
ment of the movement of the solar system
through space.
We could tell you of scientific discoveries
that are tending to revOlutiOnze the whole of
mechanics, destroying confidence even in the
accepted teachings of Newton, condemning
those teachings to inaccuracy except as applied
to matter moving SLOWLY" We could show
you the absolute proof that matter in motion
increases its mass" and many other marvels
But it would not be easy to explain how men
measure the velocity of light FLYING at friUhtfuI
speed through space-the light waves going at
right angles to each other. And the subject is
rather deep for us average mOrtas-just as the
curious actions of the man with the theOdOlite
in this picture are pulling to the savages.
what we want to impress on our readers is
the fact that the worlds real work is a work
that is unknown
The great and useful men are the teachers
the investigators, all whom we have mentioned
are only few in one university. We should
If space had permitted. have described the work
of Herrck, Marley Breasted, and score of
others in that one big laboratory of thought.
We wish our readers might give each week
at least few hours to earnest reading, that
they-especially the rich among them who have
pOwer-might realize that the real building up
of civilization is done within the brains of a
few scientific men.
We pity these poor savages in the picture
who do not even dimly understand the work of
the engineers surveying the railroad that is TO
transform their wilderness into a modern
land.
fhe future will look back with pity upon us
that do not understand the work of those cos
mic surveyors who are mapping out roads in
the land of thought and scientific knowledge
roads that will one dav make Of our primitive
savagery A REAL CIVILIZATION.