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BECQUEREL. andre Edmond, were the Traité de l'électricité et du magnetisme (1855); Elément d'électro-chimie (1843); Traité de physique (1842); Eléments de physique terrestre et de météorologie (1847); Resumé de l'histoire de l'électricité et du magnetisme (1858).

BECQUEREL, (1852—). A French physicist. He was the son of Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, and was born in Paris. He was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, from which he graduated as an engineer in 1877. He became professor of physics in the Museum of Natural History in 1878, and in 1895 occupied a similar chair at the Ecole Polytechnique. He was admitted to the Institute in 1889, and is considered one of the greatest living physicists. His researches have dealt mainly with such optical subjects as the rotation of polarized light by a magnetic field, phosphorescence, spectroscopic studies, and most important, the invisible radiation from uranium, to which the name of Becquerel rays have been given. For this discovery he received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of England.

BECSE, liech'c, (or Ó-Becse, Old Becse; called also Szerb-Becse, Serb Becse). A town of Hungary, in the county of Báes-Bodrog, on the right bank of the Theiss, near its junction with the Franzenskanal (which connects it with the Danube), 45 miles south of Szegedin (Map: Hungary, G 4). It carries on an extensive trade in grain. Population, in 1900, 18,865, mostly Magyars. New, or Turkish, Becse (Uj-Becse or Török Becse) is situated on the left bank of the Theiss, in the county of Torontál, 5 miles below Becse proper. It has trade in fruit and grain. Population, in 1890, 7000.

BECSKEREK, bech'ke-r^k. Two towns in Hungary. (1) (Hung. Nagy-Becskerek). The capital of the County of Torontál, situated on the Bega, about 45 miles west-southwest of Temesvár, with which it is connected by canal. It is a busy market-town, with a considerable grain and cattle trade. The cultivation of silkworms is an important industry. Population, in 1890, 22,000, one-third of whom are Germans, about an equal number Serbs, and only about one-fourth Magyars. (2) (Hung. Kis-Becskerek), a town in the County of Temes, about 9 miles northwest of Temesvár. Population, in 1890, 3687, mostly German Roman Catholics.

BED (AS. bed, bedd, Icel. besr, Goth, badi, OHG. betti, Ger. bett, all from the root bhodh, preserved in Lat. fodire, to dig. Originally, an excavated spot, a dug-out place, a lair). This term originally indicated, in all Germanic languages, the litter (cf. French lit = bed), on which a person slept. Then it was vised to include the frame or shelf on which the bedding was placed, the bedstead. In the ancient Orient there was little difference between the bed and the couch on which persons reclined during the day. In Egypt the frames were sometimes high, and were reached by a stool or short steps; they were supported on curved legs, ending in claw-feet, and were of graceful lines, with a slightly raised headboard, a mattress and a wooden pillow, or head-rest. Sometimes the mattress or bedclothes were supported by a wicker-work of palm-branches. The beds of the Babylonians

and Assyrians were more luxurious. Beds of ivory, gold, and fine woods were enumerated in the Amarna tablets among the objects sent from Syria to the kings of Egypt. A British Museum relief shows King Assurbanipal reclining at dinner on a magnificent couch, while his queen sits in an armchair. Sometimes the bedding was placed in a recess on a raised slab, as in the Palace of Sargon, at Khorsabad, without any bedstead. The prevalence of insects in the East soon led to the use of canopies, baldachins, and mosquito-nettings. There was one over the bed of Holophernes in his tent. These Asiatic beds were sometimes portable, sometimes stationary. The Persians are supposed to have been the first to make up a bed not only comfortable but beautiful to see, though it is probable that they inherited their taste from the Babylonians. Their great men carried beds even on campaigns, for Herodotus mentions some abandoned by Mar- donius in his sudden Might. Such beds were in- crusted with gold and silver and covered with magnificent stuffs. The Jews could hardly have equaled this magnificence; still several interest- ing passages in the Old Testament illustrate their various uses. In receiving visitors the King bowed himself upon the bed (1. Kings i. 47); in Prov. (vii. 16) the bedding is described: "I have decked my bed with coverings of tapes- try, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt." The Homeric poems mention the three main classes of early beds: the shake-down, the port- able bed, the heavy bedstead, sometimes a fixture.

The Odyssey (xxiii. 190) describes the bed made for himself by Ulysses. The trunk of the olive tree around which he built and roofed his chamber was trimmed and used as one of the bedposts, the frame being made by the addition of three more feet and the connecting frame; the whole was inlaid with gold, silver, and ivory. The bedding was supported on leather straps, and on top of it were blankets to make it softer. At that time there seem to have been no stuffed mattresses. The Greek bedsteads of historic times were at first less gorgeous, being usually made of maple or boxwood, solid or veneered. But the custom of not sitting, but reclining at table on couches, led to a gradual increase in decorative beauty in the Sixth Century B.C. Even then the Asiatics did not think that the Greeks knew how to make a comfortable bed; and when the Persian King Artaxerxes gave a bed, with all its magnificent appurtenances, to the Athenian Ambassador Timogoras, he gave also a number of attendants skilled in preparing it. While the poor continued to use the primitive litter or the skins of animals for bedcovers, the wealthy became more and more fastidious in the use of bed-covering and ornament. Miletus, Corinth, and Carthage became famous centres in the dyeing, weaving, and embroidering of bedcovers, and the bedsteads and couches were inlaid or veneered with ivory, tortoise-shell, and precious metals, and even provided with feet of solid silver or gold. There was a class of bedmakers at Athens.

The form of Greek bedsteads and bedding at different times is illustrated not only by numerous vase paintings, but by some marble beds found at Palatitza and Pydna, and a terra-cotta bed from Tanagra. The common elements were: (1) a wood frame; (2) a vegetable trellis for