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Proof that Yellow and Blue are Complementary. I now remove the analyzer, and put in its place the piece of Iceland spar with which we have already illustrated double refraction. The two images of the carbon-points are now before you, produced, as you know, by two beams vibrating at right angles to each other.
But, as the apertures come closer to each other, that is to say, as the tin-foil between the apertures vanishes, the images overlap more and more. Removing the tin-foil altogether, the screen becomes uniformly illuminated. Hence the light upon the screen may be regarded as the overlapping of innumerable images of the carbon-points.
Every such spark, produced since then innumerable times by accident, is an example of electric lighting. There are now in use in the United States some two million arc lights and nearly double that number of incandescent. There are two principal systems of electric lighting; one is by actually burning away the ends of carbon-points in the open air. This is the "arc."
The magnified image of the carbon-points is now upon the screen; and with a suitable instrument the heating power of the rays which form that image might be readily demonstrated. In this case, however, the heat is spread over too large an area to be very intense.
But, as the rays cross each other at the orifice, the image is inverted. Pricking by means of a common sewing-needle a small aperture in the tin-foil, an inverted image of the carbon-points starts forth upon the screen. A dozen apertures will give a dozen images, a hundred a hundred, a thousand a thousand.
The best arrangement is the invention of Edison, and is controlled most ingeniously by the current itself, acting through the increased difficulty of its passage when the two carbon-points are too far apart, and the increased ease with which it flows when they are too near together. The current, in leaping the small gap between the carbon-points, takes a curved path, hence the name "arc" light.
Restoring the circular aperture, we obtain once more a spectrum like that of Newton. By means of a lens, we can gather up these colours, and build them together, not to an image of the aperture, but to an image of the carbon-points themselves.
It is also black, which helps the light; for, other circumstances being equal, as shown experimentally by Professor Balfour Stewart, the blacker the body the brighter will be its light when incandescent. Still, refractory as carbon is, if we closely examined our voltaic arc, or stream of light between the carbon-points, we should find there incandescent carbon-vapour.
Causing the beam which builds the image of our carbon-points to pass through the spar, the single image is instantly divided into two. The two beams into which the spar divides the single incident-beam have been subjected to the closest examination. They do not behave alike.
To assure himself still further, he substituted a reflected image of one of the white-hot carbon-points for the sunbeam, with an identical result. The same ray was missing. It needed but another step to have generalised this result, and thus laid hold of a natural truth of the highest importance; but that step was not taken.
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