Abstract
“THE main object of this book,” says the author, “is to present to the reader a practical explanation of apparatus and methods employed in producing and utilising the X-rays.” To introduce the subject, there is a chapter in which various properties of light and electricity are described for the benefit of the general reader, to whom lenses and photography and the electric current are mysterious things. Following this is a brief mention of the apparatus used for exciting vacuum tubes, and then come chapters on induction, induction coils, contact breakers and condensers, and high frequency apparatus. There is a chapter on influence machines, and in it we have the usual descriptions of positive and negative electricity, with diagrams of their distribution upon an electrophorus in various stages; the attractions and repulsions of positive and negative are also traced in detail in the account of the Holtz machine. Eventually (Chapter ix.) we arrive at “The Crookes' tube,” and are informed how Prof. Elihu Thomson, “as early as January 1896,” found after an “exhaustive series of experiments,” that the form of tube known as the focus tube was the best for Röntgen ray work. We also learn that Mr. Shallen-berger and Mr. Scribner used this standard form of tube early in 1896, but nothing is said of the prior use of the focus tube by Mr. Herbert Jackson in this country. Mr. Edison is given “the credit of making the practical device known as the Fluoroscope,” to the description of which a chapter is devoted. Probably Mr. Edison would not himself claim much credit for the very obvious extension of Prof. Rontgen's original observations involved in the construction of the fluoroscope. Moreover, the instru ment is practically the same as the cryptoscope described by Prof. Salvioni at the beginning of February 1896.
The A.B.C. of the X-Rays.
By William H. Meadowcroft. Pp. 189. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, and Co., Ltd.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The ABC of the X-Rays. Nature 56, 444 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056444a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056444a0