X rays : an introduction to the study of Röntgen rays / by G.W.C. Kaye.

  • Kaye, G. W. C. (George William Clarkson), 1880-1941.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: X rays : an introduction to the study of Röntgen rays / by G.W.C. Kaye. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and the debt which the world of humanity owes to the X rays is a heavy and increasing one. Through the efforts of a devoted band of workers, with an outlook on life not immediately utilitarian, the Rontgen rays have thrown a searchlight on many phases of atomic physics not susceptible to other methods of attack. And, last of all, and quite recently, X rays have come to the aid of the crystallographer and triumphantly dis¬ played in the hands of Laue, Friedrich and Knipping, Bragg and others, the regular grouping of the atoms in a crystal. The experiments, which have opened up an immense field of enquiry, have at the same time given the long-deferred answer to the problem of the nature of the unknown or ;<X” rays. The Geissler discharge tube 1—the former beautiful play¬ thing of the scientist—has proved the pioneer of some of the most wonderful discoveries and speculations that physical science of this or any generation has known. Truly, as Maxwell predicted in the early seventies, the vacuum tube has shed light upon the whole domain of electrical science, and even upon the constitution of matter itself. Our present intent, that of the study of the X rays, is approached most naturally by way of a scrutiny of the general phenomena of a discharge tube and of electrons in particular. To these branches of the subject we accord¬ ingly first direct ourselves. 1 Known at different times and in different countries as the Pliicker, Hittorf, or Crookes tube.