Science Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 33, 11 December 1896, Page 19

Science Notes.

PLATINISED GLAsR. Oxj: of the most curious inventions of this inventive age is platinised glass. A piece of glass is coated with an exceedingly thin layer of a liquid charged with platinum, which becomes united to the glass in such a way as to form a \ cry odd kind of mirror. The glass has not lost its transparency, yet. if one places it against a wall arid looks at it. he sees his image as in an ordinary lookingglass. But when light is allowed to p.iss through from the other side, as in a window-pane, it appears pertectly transparent, like ordinary "lass. By constructing a window of this material one could stand close behind the panes, in an illuminated room, and ccc clearly c\ erything going on outside, while passers-by looking at the window would behold only a fine mirror, or set of mirrors, in which their own figures would be reflected and the persons inside remain invisible. In France various tricks have been played. In one a person, seeing what appears to be an ordinary mirror, approaches to look at himself. A sudden change in the mechanism send.s light through the glass from the back, whereupon it instantly becomes transparent, and the startled spectator himself is confronted by some grotesque figure which has been hidden behind the magic glass. What wonders might not a magician of the dark a»-es have wrought with a piece of platinised "lass '