PHYSICS NINETEENTH CENT.SPECTROSCOPY. 477 



than J^th of an inch wide, suffices to produce a brilliant spectrum, the 

 round hole in the shutter, a quarter of an inch in diameter, as used by 

 Newton, may be considered as made up of a series of such slits, each 

 of which would give rise to its own spectrum. Hence Wollaston was 

 the first to observe certain phenomena which were lost in Newton's 

 form of the experiment. Wollaston had no idea of the important 

 results which were afterwards to be deduced from the phenomena he 

 was the first to discover ; indeed, the discovery seems to be mentioned 

 only incidentally in a paper of his relating to another subject. We shall 

 give verbatim those passages in the paper which belong to our present 



FIG. 218. 



subject : but before doing so we devote a short paragraph to the personal 

 history of a man whose name deserves to be remembered in connec- 

 tion with this subject and for his eminent services to science generally. 

 WILLIAM HYDE WOLLASTON (1787 1826) was educated for the 

 medical profession, and took his M.D. degree at Cambridge. He 

 endeavoured to establish himself in medical practice first at Bury St. 

 Edmunds, afterwards in London but meeting with less success than 

 he expected, he abandoned the profession altogether, and devoted 

 himself to the study of chemistry and natural philosophy. He directed 

 much attention to the application of science in the arts, and some 

 patents he had secured for his inventions proved so lucrative a source 

 of income that he amassed a large fortune. He will be remembered 

 as the first to isolate the metal platinum from its native mineral, and 

 to devise a method of rendering it malleable. Wollaston as an ex- 

 perimenter was remarkable for working with very small quantities of 



