Abstract
HAVING recently had occasion to develop the first principles of the theory of inter-stellar radiation, I soon felt the want of some short and convenient word to express that form of ethereal wave-effect known as “radiant energy,” “radiant heat,” “light,” “rays of the spectrum,” &c. Radiant energy is doubtless the most accurate of these expressions, but it is subject to the objection of being a description rather than a name. The nomenclature of the subject has come down from a time when it was supposed that there were three distinct kinds of rays in the spectrum, severally known as light, heat, and actinic rays. It is, I believe, not much more than half a century since several eminent physicists and teachers supposed that the heat rays of the spectrum could be separated from the light rays having equal refrangibility by the absorption of a transparent medium; and that even the light rays of different colours might be separated in the game way. I cannot but think that the general understanding and application of the now received theory of the subject, which recognises in this form of energy no differences of kind except wave-length, has been materially retarded by the want of a corresponding nomenclature.
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NEWCOMB, S. Suggested Nomenclature of Radiant Energy. Nature 49, 100 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/049100a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049100a0
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