Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/338

324

T the time of my communication to the American Association the loudest effects obtained were produced by the use of selenium, arranged in a cell of suitable construction, and placed in a galvanic circuit with a telephone. Upon allowing an intermittent beam of sunlight to fall upon the selenium, a musical tone of great intensity was produced from the telephone connected with it.

But the selenium was very inconstant in its action. It was rarely, if ever, found to be the case that two pieces of selenium (even of the same stick) yielded the same results under identical circumstances of annealing, etc. While in Europe last autumn, Dr. Chichester Bell, of University College, London, suggested to me that this inconstancy of result might be due to chemical impurities in the selenium used. Dr. Bell has since visited my laboratory in Washington, and has made a chemical examination of the various samples of selenium I had collected from different parts of the world. As I understand it to be his intention to publish the results of this analysis very soon, I shall make no further mention of his investigation than to state that he has found sulphur, iron, lead, and arsenic in the so-called "selenium," with traces of organic matter; that a quantitative examination has revealed the fact that sulphur constitutes nearly one per cent, of the whole mass; and that when these impurities are eliminated the selenium appears to be more constant in its action and more sensitive to light.

Professor W. G. Adams has shown that tellurium, like selenium, has its electrical resistance affected by light, and we have attempted to utilize this substance in place of selenium. The arrangement of cell (shown in Fig. 7) was constructed for this purpose in the early