AMERICA'S INFERIOR POSITION 



I have before me the latest volume on metallurgy, 

 even-handedly summing up twenty years of splen- 

 did work. From almost a dictionary of names, 

 Belgian, Netherlandish, German, English, French, 

 Russian, I can find but two Americans Professor 

 Gibbs, whose contribution was most indirect, and 

 Professor Howe. Not even a science upon which 

 rests a billion-dollar trust seems to arouse the in- 

 terest of one original, inventive American mind. 



Mention of the old alchemists recalls the amaz- 

 ing results recently brought to view by Professor 

 J. J. Thomson, of Cambridge, which have been al- 

 ready described. Nowadays, every one has come to 

 know a little at least of the high vacuum Crookes 

 tubes, and the velvet glow that comes from them 

 when the tubes are electrified, which gives rise to 

 the Rontgen rays of familiar use. Sir William 

 Crookes long ago showed that this glow is made up 

 of streams of minute missiles. Bombarding a 

 fluorescent screen, they produce the Rontgen light. 

 Putting two and two and three and three together 

 in the most ingenious way, Professor Thomson has 

 been able to measure both the mass and speed of 

 these flying particles, to count them, tell the meas- 

 ure of the electrical charge that each bears a 

 charge that is enormous. The Cambridge professor 

 has shown that these bits of matter are certainly a 

 thousand times smaller than the smallest and light- 



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