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It was left, however, for Professor Röntgen to discover that during the discharge another kind of rays are set free, which differ greatly from those described by Lenard as cathode rays The most marked difference between the two is the fact that Röntgen rays are not deflected by a magnet, indicating a very essential difference, while their range and penetrative power are incomparably greater.
"Oh, no," said he; "I can't let you make pictures of me. I am too busy." Clearly the professor was entirely too modest to gratify the wishes of the curious world. "Now, Professor," said I, "will you tell me the history of the discovery?" "There is no history," he said. "I have been for a long time interested in the problem of the cathode rays from a vacuum tube as studied by Hertz and Lenard.
Edgar Hamilton, though compelled to return to the Baron, whose right hand he is, often travels to Glencardine with confidential messages, and documents for signature, and is, of course, an ever-welcome guest. The unpretentious house of Lenard et Morellet of Paris now and then effects deals so enormous that financial circles are staggered, and the world stands amazed.
In fact, all those qualities which have lent a sensational character to the discovery of Röntgen's rays were mainly absent from these of Lenard, to the end that, although Röntgen has not been working in an entirely new field, he has by common accord been freely granted all the honors of a great discovery.
This glow excites brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and these "cathode rays," as they are called, were observed and studied by Hertz; and more deeply by his assistant, Professor Lenard, Lenard having, in 1894, reported that the cathode rays would penetrate thin films of aluminium, wood, and other substances and produce photographic results beyond.
The news was soon flashed all over the world, and scientific men in every civilized country began at once to experiment with the cathode light if light that might be called that lighted nothing. In Röntgen's announcement he stated that there had been by the scientists Hertz and Lenard, in 1894, certain antecedent discoveries from which his own might in some sense be deduced.
He has seen us meet here!" "Ah!" said the Baron in a hoarse voice, "I said so. To meet openly like this was far too great a risk. Nobody knew anything of Lenard et Morellet of the Boulevard des Capucines except that they were unimportant financiers. To-morrow the world will know who they really are. Messieurs, we are the victims of a very clever ruse.
This interpretation can still, at this present moment, be maintained, and the researches of MM. Buisson, Righi, Lenard, and Merrit Stewart have even established that rays of very short wave-lengths produce on metallic conductors, from the point of view of electrical phenomena, effects quite analogous to those of the X rays.
This interpretation seemed, indeed, in 1894, destined to triumph definitely through the remarkable discovery of Lenard, a discovery which, in its turn, was to provoke so many others and to bring about consequences of which the importance seems every day more considerable.
It was a mystery who was behind Lenard et Morellet, the pair of steady-going, highly respectable business men who lived in unostentatious comfort, the former at Enghien, just outside Paris, and the latter out in the country at Melum. The mystery was so well and so carefully preserved that not even the bankers themselves could obtain knowledge of the truth.
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