THE SEARCH FOR PRIMAL MATTER 



world. The germ of such a possibility has certainly 

 crossed the mind of more than one worker in this 

 field, and it may even be surmised that there are 

 many who would not be sorry to pen its obituary. 

 Be that as it may, within the last two or three 

 years Sir Isaac Newton's corpuscles have been 

 showing signs of life. 



Brief reference has already been made to this in 

 a former chapter, but the story is worth telling in 

 detail, even at the risk of some repetition. 



Most folk who are interested in curious bits of 

 mechanism have seen and noticed the little glass 

 bulbs, with a tiny windmill inside them, which 

 often stand in a watch-seller's window. Under the 

 action of a strong light, or sufficient heat, the lit- 

 tle vanes inside this vacuum bulb begin to whirl 

 gayly. The instrument, called a radiometer i.e., 

 a measurer of radiations, such as heat and light 

 was the invention of Sir William Crookes, about 

 thirty years ago, and has been the basis of some 

 very interesting investigations in the domain of 

 molecular physics. 



When he had gone a long way in his researches, 

 Sir William Crookes was led to try the effects of 

 electricity on this same little machine. He found 

 that it would run just as well. Then he went 

 further. Some time before that is, in 1869 a 



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