Page:Collected Physical Papers.djvu/239

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COLLECTED PHYSICAL PAPERS
219

wide open, but there was no reversal with four sparks, the light aperture being reduced to one-fourth. The quantity of light was the same in the two cases, but the time-rate of illumination was different. This curious result would no longer appear anomalous, if we bear in mind the experiment in which the influence of time-rate was shown.

(2) In trying to obtain photographs by heat radiation on sensitised papers coated with a mixture of silver and mercury iodides, the following curious effect was observed. The sensitised paper was exposed to heat radiation and became uniformly reddish in colour. A mask with cut-out letters was now put on it, and the sensitised paper was allowed to cool. The rate of cooling was very rapid at the places exposed by the cut-out letters, whereas at the covered portions the rate of cooling was very much less. After a long time when the sensitive paper had cooled down to a uniform temperature, prints were still visible, the effect being evidently due to the different rates of emission of radiation in the screened and unscreened parts.

(3) Major-General Waterhouse mentions an anomalous case which seems to be explicable from considerations given above. He took a polished silvered glass plate, and put it into a printing frame with a cut-out paper mask and mica screen in which were cut-out initials, just as if it were going to be exposed to the sun; but instead of exposure