Abstract
GIVEN a well-equipped physical laboratory and an ex pert glass blower as assistant, one could pass many a pleasant hour in repeating the experiments described in this little book. The phenomena exhibited by vacuum tubes are perhaps the most fascinating that electrical science can show; they possess a rare and peculiar beauty which, like that of the rainbow or the Aurora, appeals to both the æsthetic and the scientific senses. Sir David Salomons describes how tubes may be constructed to produce certain definite results in the arrangement of striae and so forth, and many of the designs give evidence of painstaking ingenuity. A number of experiments with tubes and magnets are also described, some of which serve to illustrate well the mutual action of electric currents and magnetic fields. The author does not deal with those phenomena which, in the hands of Sir W. Crookes, J. J. Thomson and others, have led in recent years to results of such importance; indeed, the theoretical explanations which are given as a running commentary on the experiments seem rather to show a lack of appreciation of the essential facts which have added such interest to the behaviour of the electric discharge in high vacua, and have raised the vacuum tube from the position of a scientific toy to that of a powerful instrument of research.
Experiments with Vacuum Tubes.
By Sir D. L. Salomons. Pp. vii + 49. (London: Whittaker and Co., 1903.) Price 2s.
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S., M. Experiments with Vacuum Tubes . Nature 68, 6 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/068006b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/068006b0