HITTORF, W. (JOHANN WILHELM). - CATHODE RAYS - EARLY TELEVISION.

Ueber die Elektricitätsleitung der Gase. Erste- Dritte Mittheilung. (3 papers in 4 parts).

Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1869, 1874, 1879. Contemp. hcalf, raised bands, gilt spine with gilt lettering. A few scratches to binding. In "Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Hrsg.von Poggendorff", Bd. 136. X,644 pp. and 8 folded engraved plates. (The entire volume offered). Hittorf's paper: pp. 1-31 a. 197-234. With 2 engraved plates showing apparatus. + (2. Mitth.) Jubelband (Poggendorff) pp. 430-445. (Extracted) + (3. Mitth.) Annalen, Neue Folge Bd. VII, No 8. Pp. 497-680 a. 1 plate (entire issue offered). Hittorf's paper: pp. 558-631.

First appearance of these main paper in the development of Television, and an importent step towards the discovery of Röntgen-Rays, as Hittorf describes his discovery how the cathode glow spread toward the anode, how solid objects near the cathode would cast shadows in the phosphorescent glow in the glass, and that this glow was produced by raylike emanations that traveled in straight lines from the cathode rays.

"Following Plückers studies, in 1869 Hittorf began a series of investigations of the discharge phenomena. He verified the effect of the magnetic field on the glow discharge and the fluorescence of the glass tube itself. He found that any solid or fluid body, whether an insulator or a conductor, when placed in front of the cathode cut off the glow. By constructing an L-shaped tube with electrodes at the two ends, Hittorf was able to establish that the glow was generated from a point cathode and traveled in straight lines. "We will therefore speak of rectilinear path or rays of glow, and consider any point of the cathode as the source of a cone of rays" ....These results led the brilliant researches on gaseous conduction by Crookes ten years later (1879) and the eventual identification of the cathode rays as electrons by J.J. Thomson (1897)."(DSB, VI, p.439).

(Shiers & Shiers "Early Televison. A Bibliography to 1940", No.45). - Magie "A Source Book in Physics", p. 561 ff.

Order-nr.: 45078