E-text prepared by Sharon Joiner, Erica Pfister-Altschul, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 36456-h.htm or 36456-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36456/pg36456-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36456/36456-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/autobiographyofe00gibsrich THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ELECTRON [Illustration: A WELL-KNOWN PHENOMENON PRODUCED BY ELECTRONS _Photo_ _The Fleet Agency_ A sudden discharge of electrons from cloud to cloud, or from cloud to the earth, constitutes what we call "lightning."] THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ELECTRON. Wherein the Scientific Ideas of the Present Time Are Explained in an Interesting and Novel Fashion by CHARLES R. GIBSON, F.R.S.E. Author of "Scientific Ideas of To-Day," "Electricity of To-Day" "The Romance of Modern Electricity," _&c. &c._ Illustrated Philadelphia J. B. Lippincott Company London: Seeley & Co. Limited 1911 PREFACE Although text-books of science may appear to the general reader to be "very dry" material, there is no doubt that, when scientific facts and theories are put into everyday language, the general reader is genuinely interested. The reception accorded to the present author's _Scientific Ideas of To-day_ bears out this fact. While that volume explains, in non-technical language, the latest scientific theories, it aims at giving a fairly full account, which, of course, necessitates going into a great deal of detail. That the book has been appreciated by very varied classes of readers is evident from the large numbers of appreciative letters received from different quarters. But the author believes that if the story of modern science were told in a still more popular style, it would serve a further useful purpose. For there are readers who do not care to go into details, and yet would like to take an intelligent interest in the scientific progress of the present day. Some of those readers do not wish to trouble about names and dates, while the mere mention of rates of vibration and such-like is a worry to them. They wish a book which they may read with the same ease as an interesting novel. Hence the form of the present volume. * * * * *