Word: raying
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...concealed excitement. Weeks before, the committee on awards had notified Dr. William David Coolidge, assistant research director of the General Electric Co., that he was this year's recipient of the Howard N. Potts gold medal, in recognition of his now universally used invention, the Coolidge X-ray tube. And Dr. Coolidge had replied, saying that he would present himself for the reward, and at the same time submit a demonstration called: "A Method of Producing High Voltage Cathode Rays Outside the Generating Tube...
...electro-physicists this title was a great deal more significant than it would have sounded to laymen. It meant that Dr. Coolidge-the man who, besides his X-ray work, first learned to make brittle tungsten ductile and so suitable for electric light bulbs ("Mazda") of low price and long life-that this man of results had been exploring a field discovered 50 years ago by Sir William Crookes of England and only faintly understood ever since...
There had been a premature announcement of Dr. Coolidge's ray and tube, saying that they were so powerful they would completely disintegrate the body of a mouse in a fraction of a second's exposure. Dr. Coolidge did not verify this report, but the Franklin Institute members heard of or witnessed the following...
Acetylene gas in a sealed tube was reduced to a surprisingly large quantity of yellow powder, resembling varnish, which resisted all chemical reagents and a heat of 4000°. The powder was a substance utterly unknown to chemists. Precipitated by the ray upon an aluminum disc, the powder became an enamel which could not be removed...
...lump of fused quartz, clear as water, turned purple; a lump of feldspar glowed blue, amber, ruby, amethyst, with patches of brilliant green, successively; a lump of limestone burned angry orange. After exposure to the rays, these minerals looked searing hot but were not. Their fluorescence was without rise in temperature and in some cases persisted for hours after the exposure (as displaced electrons worked slowly back to their places in the atoms). The application of heat and cold (liquid air) altered the speed and intensity of these effects. Diamonds were only temporarily affected by exposure to the ray...