FROGS HELP IN TWO GREAT DISCOVERIES.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2337, 27 January 1913, Page 7

FROGS HELP IN TWO GREAT DISCOVERIES.

Surely it is one of the oddest of coincidences that the frog should have been primarily accountable, each time through an accident, for two very important scientific discoveries, both connected with electricity—namely,)

galvanism and the X-ray. Most people are familiar with the story of the discovery of galvanism, which was due to the accidental carcumstance that one of a number of frogs’ legs, prepared for cooking in the laboratory of the physicist Galvani, came into contact with an electric wire. Gah’ani's wife was ill, and he was getting ready to fry the dainty batrachian morsels, when suddenly one of the legs began to dance. The discovery of the X-ray was so simple and obvious that any clever student in a physical laboratory might have made it. Mere chance led Professor Rontgen to come upon it. A large Crookes tube —i.0., a v a~ cuum bulb of glass, through which a current of electricity was passed, producing the peculiar glow known as fluorescence —was suspended over a

table, and in a drawer beneath there was a pasteboard box containing one dozen unexposed photographic plates.

It so happened that some keys were lying on the table, just above the drawer. When a n attempt was afterwards made to use the plates lor photographic purposes they worn found to be ‘‘fogged,” but on each', one of them was a fairly clear imprint of the bunch of keys.

Thus it became apparent that rays of some kind had penetrated through the wooden top of the table, and had been so far interrupted by the keys as to make a shadow-picture of the latter on the. photographic plates. It, was at once obvious that a new fact of physics had hern discovered. and thereupon a series of experiments was undertaken with objects of various kinds placed on the table-top under like conditions. Everything imaginable, was tried. One of Professor Rontgcn's assistants picked up a dead frog (which had been used for some other laboratory work) and put it in the place ordinarily occupied by the bunch of keys, a fresh photographic plate, as usual reposing in the drawer beneath. The result was a revelation, for the shadow-picture made was not of the frog, but of its skeleton. From which fact it was learned that flesh was transparent to the ncwly-discovcrcd rays, whereas bones were opaque to them.—'"Tit Bits.”