Porcelain, enamels, and diamonds, and also objects covered with platino-cyanides (used by Roentgen) and with calcium tungstate, zinc sulphate, etc., have, like glass, the property of becoming luminous in darkness under the action of the X rays. We have, therefore, only the trouble of selection in order to get up a “spirit séance” with every certainty of success, while genuine spiritual séances fail in most cases, as well known, because the spirits are in an ill mood and disposed to be coyish.
ARRANGEMENT FOR A STRIKING EXPERIMENT WITH THE X RAYS.
The following will prove a scene sufficiently weird to put the most intrepid worldlings in a flurry if some one of our friends takes it into his head to give them the mysterious spectacle thereof before they have read an exposure of the trick.
THE APPARITION.
The first [figure] that we present herewith exhibits a Ruhmkorff coil, which is placed here to show the operation in its entirety. But, as the first effect of its vibrations would be to attract the attention, and consequently the suspicions of the spectators, whom it is a question of transporting into the domain of the marvelous, this apparatus is relegated to some distant room. The current that produces the X rays is led into the Crookes tube by wires. This apparatus, moreover, which is not very bulky, may be placed behind a door or be concealed under black cloth. The objects designed to become luminous are placed as near to the tube as possible. In the experiment under consideration a diner (who is doubtless near-sighted, since he wears eyeglasses) is about to do justice to his breakfast. Armed with a knife and fork, he attacks his beefsteak; but he is assuredly a greater eater than drinker, since he contents himself with water, while his light consists of a single candle.
A black curtain on the other side of the table conceals from the spectators a skeleton covered with zinc sulphide.