ATOMIC HYDROGEN 101 



have been reached by a direct attack ; or may lead to valuable by-products 

 in the form of new lines of activity for the industrial organization. 



Of course, no industrial laboratory should neglect the possibilities of 

 the first and older method of organized industrial research. I wish, how- 

 ever, to dwell upon the merits of the second method in which pure science 

 or scientific curiosity is the guide. 



HISTORY OF THE GAS-FILLED LAMP 



I first entered the Research Laboratory of the General Electric Com- 

 pany in the summer of 1909, expecting in the fall to return to Stevens 

 Institute, where I had been teaching chemistry. Instead of assigning me to 

 any definite work, Doctor Whitney suggested that I spend several days in 

 the various rooms of the laboratory, becoming familiar with the work that 

 was being done by the different men. He asked me to let him know what I 

 found of most interest as a problem for the summer vacation. 



A large part of the laboratory staff' was busily engaged in the develop- 

 ment of drawn tungsten wire made by the then new Coolidge process. A 

 serious difficulty was being experienced in overcoming the "offsetting" of 

 the filaments, a kind of brittleness which appeared only when the lamps 

 were run on alternating current. Out of a large number of samples of wire, 

 three had accidentally been produced which gave lamps that ran as well 

 with alternating as with direct current, but it was not known just what had 

 made these wires so good. It seemed to me that there was one factor that 

 had not been considered — that is, that the offsetting might possibly be due 

 to impurities in the wire in the form of gases. I therefore suggested to 

 Doctor Whitney that I would like to heat various samples of wire in high 

 vacuum and measure the quantities of gas obtained in each case. 



In looking through the laboratory I had been particularly impressed 

 with the remarkably good methods that were used for exhausting lamps. 

 These methods were, I thought, far better than those known to scientific 

 research workers. My desire to become more familiar with these methods 

 was undoubtedly one of the factors that led me to select for my first re- 

 search an investigation of the gas content of wires. 



After starting the measurements that I had planned, I found that the 

 filaments gave off surprisingly large quantities of gas. Within a couple of 

 weeks I realized that something was entirely wrong with my apparatus, 

 because from a small filament in a couple of days I obtained a quantity of 

 gas which had, at atmospheric pressure, a volume 7000 times that of the 

 filament from which it appeared to have come ; and even then there was no 

 indication that this gas evolution was going to. stop. It is true that in the 

 literature^ — -for example in J. J. Thomson's book on the "Conduction of 

 Electricity through Gases" — one found many statements that metals in 



