Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/835

Rh continuously by heating up to the point of fusion, and that the resistance suddenly increased in passing from the solid to the liquid condition. It was early discovered that exposure to sunlight hastens the change of selenium from one allotropic form to another; and this observation is significant in the light of recent discoveries.

Although selenium has been known for the last sixty years it has not yet been utilized to any extent in the arts, and it is still considered simply as a chemical curiosity. It is usually supplied in the form of cylindrical bars. These bars are sometimes found to be in the metallic condition; but more usually they are in the vitreous or non-conducting form. It occurred to Willoughby Smith that, on account of the high resistance of crystalline selenium, it might be usefully employed at the shore-end of a submarine cable, in his system of testing and signaling during the process of submersion. Upon experiment, the selenium was found to have all the resistance required—some of the bars employed measuring as much as fourteen hundred megohms—a resistance equivalent to that which would be offered by a telegraph wire long enough to reach from the earth to the sun! But the resistance was found to be extremely variable. Experiments were made to ascertain the cause of this variability. Mr. May, Mr. Willoughby Smith's assistant, discovered that the resistance was less when the selenium was exposed to light than when it was in the dark.

In order to be certain that temperature had nothing to do with the effect, the selenium was placed in a vessel of water, so that the light had to pass through from one to two inches of water in order to reach the selenium. The approach of a lighted candle was found to be sufficient to cause a marked deflection of the needle of the galvanometer connected with the selenium, and the lighting of a piece of magnesium wire caused the selenium to measure less than half the resistance it did the moment before.

These results were naturally at first received by scientific men with some incredulity, but they were verified by Sale, Draper, Moss, and others. When selenium is exposed to the action of the solar spectrum, the maximum effect is produced, according to Sale, just outside the red end of the spectrum, in a point nearly, coincident with the maximum of the heat-rays; but, according to Adams, the maximum effect is produced in the greenish-yellow or most luminous part of the spectrum. Lord Rosse exposed selenium to the action of non-luminous radiations from hot bodies, but could produce no effect; whereas a thermopile under similar circumstances gave abundant indications of a current. He also cut off the heat-rays from luminous bodies by the interposition of liquid solutions, such as alum, between the selenium and the source of light, without affecting the power of the light to reduce the resistance of the selenium; whereas the interposition of these same substances almost completely neutralized the effect upon the thermopile. Adams found that selenium was sensitive to the cold