352 L. Page — A Century's Progress in Physics. 



American Physicists. — In attempting to cover the 

 progress of physics during the last hundred years in the 

 space of a few pages, many important developments of 

 the subject have of necessity remained untouched, and 

 the treatment of many others has been entirely inade- 

 quate. Among those appearing in this Journal of which 

 no mention has been made are LeConte's (25, 62, 1858) 

 discovery of the sensitive flame and Bood's (46, 173, 

 1893) invention of the flicker photometer. However, 

 enough has been recounted to indicate the pre-eminent 

 position in the history of physics in America occupied by 

 four men: Joseph Henry, of the Albany Academy, 

 Princeton, and the Smithsonian Institution; Henry 

 Augustus Eowland, of Johns Hopkins University; 

 Josiah Willard Gribbs, of Yale; and Albert Abraham 

 Michelson, of the United States Naval Academy, Case 

 School of Applied Science, Clark University, and the 

 University of Chicago. Of these, the last named has the 

 distinction of being the only American physicist to have 

 received the Nobel prize, though there is little doubt that 

 the other three would have been similarly honored had 

 not their important work been published prior to the 

 institution of this award. All four occupy high places 

 in the ranks of the world's great men of science, and the 

 investigations carried out by them and their fellow 

 workers in America have given to their country a posi- 

 tion in the annals of physics which is by no means insig- 

 nificant. 



The Journal's Part in Meteorology. 



The meteorological investigations published in the 

 early numbers of this Journal have played an important 

 role in establishing a correct theory of storms. Before 

 the origin of the United States Signal Service in 1871 no 

 systematic weather reports were issued by any govern- 

 mental agency in this country, and consequently the work 

 of collecting as well as interpreting meteorological data 

 rested entirely in the hands of interested individuals and 

 institutions. The earliest important studies of storms 

 to appear in the Journal were contributed by Eedfield of 

 New York, whose first paper (20, 17, 1831) treated in 

 considerable detail a violent storm which passed over 

 Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1821. 

 He concluded that "the direction of the wind at a partic- 

 ular place, forms no part of the essential character of a 

 storm, but is only incidental to that particular portion 



