New York Scientists and the New Light

Nikola Tesla Is Nearly Ready to Photograph Objects at Night Miles Away Through a Fog.

DR. FRIEDBURG GETS DIM RESULTS THROUGH WOOD

He Has Been in Communication with Professor Röntgen and Tells Parts of the Secret, Predicting Astonishing Things if Only the Light Can Be Made Stronger — A Run on Crookes Tubes.

Nikola Tesla, Dr. L. H. Friedburg and perhaps other electrical physicists in this city promise soon to give to the world as startling discoveries, along Professor Röntgen’s line, as he has just given in his new-found system of photographing the skeleton and skull of the human body through the flesh, the coins hidden in a purse or objects concealed behind wood.

Mr. Tesla is working on a device — and he expects to have it finished soon — that will photograph for miles through the densest fog. It will enable man to see through any sort of atmosphere. In Mr. Tesla’s own language: “If my device were now completed, Captain Jamison could have seen with his electric field glass the Jersey shores which he was approaching, and could have kept the St. Paul from going aground with as much ease as on the clearest day.”

This startling invention probably would be ready to-day if it had not been for the loss of Mr. Tesla’s laboratory several months ago. That unfortunate incident has set him back for years, he having lost many facts recorded in his papers that he has racked his brain in vain to recall.

Mr. Tesla gives no hint of how he is working to photograph through fog and clouds and midnight, but he spoke confidently to a Press reporter who saw him at his laboratory in East Houston street.

Mr. Tesla was asked if he had done any photographing through solid opaque bodies, after the manner of Professor Röntgen. He said he had not, although his own investigations have been along the same line. Indeed, he was the first to show, a few years ago, this marvellous new light, as produced in the Crookes tube and, better still, in the Tesla tube.

Mr. Tesla’s experiments were fully described in an elaborate article in the Century Magazine some time ago, and it was perhaps from this source that German professors got their latest ideas for the experiments Professor Röntgen was making at the time he stumbled upon his startling discovery.

Mr. Tesla says — and he is the only man who has yet made such a venture — that he believes he understands what this new light is. He holds (not with Röntgen) that it is a combination of the visible with the invisible light in the tube that does the work of photographing through opaque bodies. Take away the visible light, if such could be done, and no photographic effect could be had.

A RUN ON CROOKES TUBES.

One can judge of the number of experiments that are being made with the wonderful new light by the sudden heavy demand at chemical supply stores for the apparatus known as Crookes tube, in which the light is generated by means of an electric current. One large chemical house had sold out its entire supply by the middle of last week and has placed a large order for more.

The experimenters must be in dead earnest, for the cheapest Crookes tubes cost $7, and the prices run up to $15, and even beyond, according to the size. They are painfully fragile. Professor Friedburg tried five of these tubes before he got one that appeared to be what he wanted. Professor Trowbridge at Harvard was more lucky in finding a good one after the second effort, hence he is the first man on this side of the Atlantic to make genuine photographs, like those of Professor Röntgen.

The tube devised by Nikola Tesla is the best tube for the purpose, but Tesla does not sell it. A Crookes tube will give no results in photography unless the atmosphere in it is attenuated to the point of being as near an absolute vacuum as can be made. The trouble with most professors and all amateurs is the fact that they have no way to measure the vacuum in their tubes. This is an extremely delicate process, and few men can do it accurately.

DR. FRIEDBURG GETS RESULTS.

Dr. L. H. Friedburg of the Flower Hospital College, who has direct communication with Professor Röntgen, and has heard from him since the announcement of his discovery, probably has a better idea of what the German professor has really done and how he has done it than any other man, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Friedburg has not, as yet, photographed any skulls and cross-bones in his laboratory. He said to a reporter that he hoped in a few days to do something in advance of his friends in Germany. He is spending every spare minute from his regular duties in experimenting.

Dr. Friedburg, in his laboratory at the American Veterinary College in West Fifty-fourth street, made a dozen experiments on Friday night, and got definite results, although they were not satisfactory. In one of these experiments he stuck a knife through a piece of liver and placed them behind a wooden box, about one-eighth of an inch thick. The box was placed between the camera and the Crookes tube, in a dark room. The light from the tube went through the liver and through the box and left a faint outline of the knife on the sensitive plate in the camera — probably the first picture of the sort ever taken in New York. The outline was too faint to be called a photograph, but it was strong enough to prove that the mysterious light from the Crookes tube can shine through substances impenetrable to sunlight.

Dr. Friedburg also undertook to photograph the coins concealed in a leather purse, and again got the exasperatingly dim outlines. He fared no better with the other experiments.

The doctor explained that his tube was all right — but his battery was not of sufficient strength. He said that if he could have had the battery power from the street Edison light he had no doubt he could have done better. The doctor says the reason the German professors have beaten us so far in photographing is their better supply of electrical instruments.

HOW IT IS DONE.

On Wednesday he lectured to his class on this new light, giving illustrations of it in a Crookes tube, and showing how the apparatus must be rigged up for photographing.

Dr. Friedburg’s illustrations and what he said are worth reporting as giving the clearest idea yet of just what has been done and what may be expected in this new field.

On the doctor’s table, in his class, was placed two charged Leyden jars, connected with a Ruhmkorff coil, whose electrodes were attached to the two wires from the Crookes tube. The room was darkened and the current turned on. From the positive pole in the tube a deep violet light was sent out. In the negative side of the tube glowed a beautiful fluorescent light resembling that sometimes seen in the cat’s eye in the dark.

Dr. Friedburg placed a Crookes tube in a closed wooden box, shutting out absolutely all light from it. A foot away from this box he erected a screen, and smeared upon it fluorescent paint. This painted screen he called a light detector. “Now,” said he, “if the light in the tube is strong enough to get through the thin side of the box, you will see its rays on that painted screen. If the rays are strong enough, I will substitute a camera containing a sensitive plate, and then I will put my hand between the camera and the box and take a skeleton picture of it.”

The doctor could detect no rays of light on the screen, however, and the camera was useless.

WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES.

“In order to understand clearly the effects of this marvelous light,” said Dr. Friedburg, “let us suppose that the sun gave out such a light in addition to that of its ordinary light, and man had the same nature and needs that he now has. How would the world look? Let us take a peep at New York city, and especially Broadway, on a busy day. This great highway would be crowded with shadows and human skeletons stalking along, everybody naked to the bone, unless he wore a suit of glass, for glass is the greatest absorbent of this light. What a picture appears to the imagination!

“Nobody can tell what this newborn baby will grow to,” continued Professor Friedburg. “Look at the great arc light of a hundred thousand candle power. If we had a Crookes tube into which we could turn that giant light, we might look through mill stones, or down into the bottom of the sea, or through the clouds; see what is on the planets. It all depends upon the intensity and concentration of this new light.

THROUGH FOUR INCHES OF WOOD.

“The Crookes tube is as yet nothing more than a little toy vacuum, and only small batteries have been used to charge it. Nearly all the reports about Professor Röntgen’s work are erroneous. He has as yet been able to photograph through only about four inches of wood or paper and through thin sheets of aluminum.

“When the light is strong enough to photograph bones in the human body, it will pass through the human flesh and leave that blank. You will then see the difficulty of photographing the brain in the human head. There are flesh holes in the head, two at the point of the ears, and others. A light that will pass through these holes and not through the bones of the skull will show on the camera a shadow picture of an empty skull. This light, like a bullet, goes through whatever matter is not able to resist it, and photographs that which absorbs it on exactly the same principle that ordinary light does.”

Professor Pupin of Columbia College has also laid in a supply of Crookes tubes, but has not yet been able to find one in which the vacuum was sufficiently complete.