DISCOVERY AND INVENTION

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

DISCOVERY AND INVENTION

Professor Ramsay, the joint discoverer with Lord Rayleigh of argon, has, with the assistance of Morris Travers, eliminated from the atmosphere a new gas, which he calls crypton. The new element is obtained by evaporating large quantities of liquid air. It is transparent and heavier than argon, and, like the latter, is inactive. It exists in the atmosphere in the proportion of 1 to 20,000. Its chief lines in the spectrum are grqen and yellow.

A new cork pavement is favourably regarded by the municipal authorities in several cities. It is noiseless and sofi to the tread, but at the same time durable. It is a variety of asphalt paving, in which cork is substituted for the sand of the ordinary kind, preventing slipping and deadening to even a greater degree the vibrations from passing vehicles. Snow does not freeze to it, ana as it is nonabsorbent its qualities seem much superior to those of wood pavement. It is said to 'stand' on hea*/y grades upon which the ordinary asphalt pavement cannot be used at all, and still afford a perfectly safe footing. For schools and hospitals it would seem to be the ideal pavement, especially for courtyards and playgrounds.

Artists in photography will be interested in a statement that Arthur W. Clayden, fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and head of the College of Exeter, England, exhibited in a recent lecture on photographing meteorological phenomena some lantern slide views of clouds taken by him arter a process recently invented by him —photographs showing beautiful blues in all their shades, from ultramarine down to perfect white, various grays and some iron-red and greenish tints, says the 'Scientific American.' The revolutionizing feautre of the Clayden process consists in the fact that these coloured photographs are positives—that is, . according to the statement given out, he has succeeded in obtaining coloured prints by a purely chemical way of developing the same on a specially prepared plate. The process at present ;is restricted to lantern slides, but these are not coloured by painting, but by development, while coloured paper prints loom up distinctly in the near future. Bright red rays, the Inventor says, have so far escaped him, but he believes that further experiments and probably a longer development will realise the mastery of that defect. As an intermediary stage between plate prints and paper printing, ivory or thin celluloid plates have been suggested.