Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/105

 bright D line was seen in precisely the same place in the spectrum of light coming from the electric arc; Stokes was informed by Foucault of this observation a few years later. It seemed to Stokes that a dynamical illustration of how a medium could act both by emission and absorption for light of a definite refrangibility was not far to seek. He says: "I imagine a series of stretched wires, like pianoforte wires, all turned to the same note. The series, if agitated, suppose by being struck, would give out that note, which on the other hand it would be capable of taking up if sounded in air. To carry out the analogy, we have only to suppose a portion of the molecules constituting the vapor of the arc to be endowed with a capacity of vibrating in a definite manner, that is according to a definite time of vibration. But what were these molecules? It is well known that the bright D line in flames is specially characteristic of compounds of sodium, though from its very general, occurrences some had doubted whether it were not really due to something else. But in what condition must we suppose the sodium in the arc to be? The compounds of sodium, such as common salt, carbonate of soda, etc., are colorless; and it would be contrary to the analogy of what we know as to the relation of gases and vapors to their liquids or solutions to suppose that a gas which does exercise absorption should be merely the vapor of a heated solid which does not. On this ground it seemed to me that the substratum which exercised the selective absorption in Foucault's experiment must be free sodium. This might be conceivably set free from its compounds in the intense actions which go on in the sun or in the electric arc; but I had not thought that a body of such powerful affinities would be set free in the gentle flame of a spirit lamp nor experienced that the fact of that flame emitting light of the indefinite refrangibility of D entails of necessity that it should absorb light of that same refrangibility."

In 1869 Stokes was president of the British Association at a meeting in Exeter. His address was devoted chiefly to recent progress in spectrum analysis to which Mr. Huggins had just applied Döppler's principle in the theory of sound