Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/201

Rh Such a marked reënforcement of the sound resulted that he was induced to try lampblack alone.

About a teaspoonful of lampblack was placed in a test-tube and exposed to an intermittent beam of sunlight. The sound produced was much louder than any heard before.

Upon smoking a piece of plate-glass, and holding it in the intermittent beam with the lampblack surface toward the sun, the sound produced was loud enough to be heard, with attention, in any part of the room. With the lampblack surface turned from the sun, the sound was much feebler.

Mr. Tainter repeated these experiments for me immediately upon my return to Washington, so that I might verify his results.

Upon smoking the interior of the conical cavity shown in Fig. 1, and then exposing it to the intermittent beam, with the glass lid in position as shown, the effect was perfectly startling. The sound was so loud as to be actually painful to an ear placed closely against the end of the hearing-tube.

The sounds, however, were sensibly louder when we placed some smoked wire-gauze in the receiver, as illustrated in the drawing (Fig. 1).

When the beam was thrown into a resonator, the interior of which had been smoked over a lamp, most curious alternations of sound and silence were observed. The interrupting disk was set rotating at a high rate of speed, and was then allowed to come gradually to rest. An extremely feeble musical tone was at first heard, which gradually fell in pitch as the rate of interruption grew less. The loudness of the sound produced varied in the most interesting manner. Minor reënforcements were constantly occurring, which became more and more marked as the true pitch of the resonator was neared. When at last the frequency of interruption corresponded to the frequency of the fundamental of the resonator, the sound produced was so loud that it might have been heard by an audience of hundreds of people.

The effects produced by lampblack seemed to me to be very extraordinary, especially as I had a distinct recollection of experiments made in the summer of 1880 with smoked diaphragms, in which no such reënforcement was noticed.

Upon examining the records of our past photophonic experiments we found in vol. vii, p. 57, the following note:

Experiment V.—Mica diaphragm covered with lampblack on side exposed to light.

Result: distinct sound about same as without lampblack.—A. G. B., July 18, 1880.

Verified the above, but think it somewhat louder than when used without lampblack.—S. T., July 18, 1880.

Upon repeating this old experiment we arrived at the same result as that noted. Little if any augmentation of sound resulted from