Scientific American Supplement, No. 648, June 2, 1888.Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 648, June 2, 1888.
Various
Science -- Periodicals
I showed you the form of electric light which we call the arc, and I have
here to-night two or three different forms of arc lamps, which I will show
in action. But I want you to see this arc light for yourselves, and I want
you to feel, as I feel, that in all nature there is nothing more wonderful
and nothing more beautiful than the action of electric currents in the
arc. The light is, as I attempted to show you, the very same light that
came from the sun. I can show you that it is of the same character as the
light of the sun, and in the lantern on the table there is an arc lamp the
light of which we will throw on the paper before me in the form of a
spectrum. There you see the spectrum in all its purity; the spectrum from
the sun is no purer as regards light than what you now see. There you see
all the colors of the rainbow, and I had intended, if it were possible, to
show you in the first experiment, in which we raised platinum wire to
incandescence, that the first color would be the red, then the orange,
then the yellow, then the green, then the blue, then the indigo, and
lastly the violet. Beyond the violet there are rays of light which we
cannot see; they are the rays that produce the photographic pictures, and,
had time permitted it, we would probably have taken to-night a picture by
means of the arc lamps, but it requires a long time to do so, and it
really is no more interesting than an ordinary photographic picture. There
are all the different colors of the rainbow. Those who are anxious to
remember the order of the colors can very easily do so if they will
remember this simple sentence, "Read over your good book in verse." The
first letter of each word in that sentence gives the first letter of the
color in the order of the spectrum. It would be a very good thing if some
of our artists were to study and remember the colors of the rainbow, for
it is an extremely rare thing indeed to find a picture with the colors of
the rainbow properly depicted, sometimes they are upside down, sometimes
they are mixed, and if you discuss the fact with an artist, he will say,
"I do not care about your science. I simply paint my own impressions."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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