Page:Collected Physical Papers.djvu/58

38 The only thing which proved tolerably efficient for this purpose was a piece of thick blotting paper or cloth soaked in an electrolyte. A cardboard tube with an inner layer of soaked blotting paper is impervious to electric radiation, and the internal reflection, though not completely removed, is materially reduced. No reliance can, however, be placed on this expedient, when a very sensitive receiver is used.

After repeated trials with different forms of receiving tubes, I found a form, described below, to obviate many of the difficulties. Instead of a continuous receiving tube, I made two doubly inclined shields, and placed them one behind the other, on the radial arm which carries the receiver. The first shield has a tolerably large aperture, the aperture of the second being somewhat smaller. The size of the aperture is determined by the wave-length of radiation used for the experiment. It will be seen from this arrangement, that the rays which are in the direction of the radial arm, can effectively reach the receiver, the slanting rays being successively reflected by the two shields. With this expedient, a great improvement was effected in obtaining a definite reading.

When the deviated rays are convergent, the receiver is simply placed behind the shields, at the focus of the rays. But when the rays are parallel, the use of an objective (placed behind the first shield) gives very satisfactory results. As objectives I used ordinary glass lenses; knowing the index from my experiments, I was able to calculate the focal distance for the electric ray. This is of course very different from the focal distance for the luminous rays. I at first used a lens of 6 cm. electric focal distance, but this did not improve