NEW LIGHT MARVEL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1079, 25 March 1913, Page 4

NEW LIGHT MARVEL.

Not long ago Professor Stanley communicated to the Academy of Sciences a note on “Cold Eight,” a discovery made by his former pupil, M. Dussaud (writes the Paris correspondent of the Standard). Before making details of the discovery public, M. Dussaud delivered a demonstrative lecture in his own house before a distinguished company of guests, including several ambassadors and leading lights in society, art and science.

The invention is based on the principle of matter having need of rest, or molecular equilibrium. For example, two springs working alternately wear out more slowly than if each is worked continuously. “Cold Eight” is tbe application ot this principle to incandescent electric lamps. Eight is concentrated in a single point by all the filaments working successively, and .projected through a lens multiplying a thousandfold. By this process, M. Dussaud has succeeded in concentrating 2,000 candle-power in a single point and passing 32 volts into an 8-volt lamp, which otherwise would burst.

The advantages claimed are, first, the elimination ot danger, since a lamp, though producing so dazzling a light that it is impossible to look at it with the naked eye, can'be held in the hand without the slightest heat being felt. Second, such a lamp requires a hundred times less current than the ordinary lamp, and in the absence of a sector, it can be produced by a tiny battery. The motive power can be given by an ordinary water tap, a squirrel in a cage, or the operator’s foot. Third, it contains ultra-violet rays, thus requiring a hundred times less electricity than usual. These facts were all demonstrated on the screen. A beautiful coloured landscape, three yards square, to project which with ordinary lamps would require 40 volts, or 2000 watts, only needed 20 watts with tbe “cold light,” costing one centime instead of a franc, or a hundredth of the cost. All the views shown were produced with very small and inexpensive apparatus, and henceforth similar illustrations can be given in schools by professors without danger, the only appliance being a cheap little apparatus that can be slipped into the pocket. Another demonstration was a microbe parasite from the mouse, magnified nine million times, proving the advantage'of “cold light” in not spoiling the most delicate preparation, which could not stand ordinary hot illumination. We shall see no more magnesium flares or suffocating fumes, for by pressing a rubber ball the photographic shutter and the “cold light” are released simultaneously, without noise or smell, and the picture is taken in a fourth of the time that would be required by tbe use of magnesium. The invention is especially valuable to light-houses and submarine and aerial navigation. Experiments already made at the Biarritz lighthouse are conclusive, and M. Dussaud is now working on a series of projectors for the Ministry of War.