25 YEARS AGO

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 151, 23 March 1938, Page 10

25 YEARS AGO

Atomic Experiments (From "The Dominion," March 26, IMS.) History—right or wrong—was made on February 6 at the meeting of the Chemical Society at Burlington House, London, by the reading of two papers which the acting-president characterised as a momentous communication and as unsurpassed for dramatic interest. The papers described experiments that go right down to fundamental conceptions, that, if the authors’ results are accepted, establish the idea of the transmutation of elements on a firm basis or announce the transformation of energy into matter. The joint work of Professor Ramsay, Professor z Norman Collie and Mr. H. Patterson,’ goes to prove that on passing an electric charge through a vacuum tube containing sufficient hydrogen to conduct the current neon and helium make their appearance. The Prime Minister informed a reporter yesterday that eighty-two_ replies had been received to the advertisement for a General Manager for the New Zealand Railways. » » • The' British Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, replying to a question in the House of Commons, reiterated that Great Britain was under no secret obligations to send troops to the Continent.