Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works

by Edward S. Holden

Having tried many varieties of shade-glasses between the eye-piece of his telescope and the eye, in order to reduce the inordinate degree of heat and light transmitted by the instrument when directed towards the sun, he observed that certain combinations of colored glasses permitted very little light to pass, but transmitted so much heat that they could not be used; while, on the other hand, different combinations and differently colored glasses would stop nearly all the heat, but allow an inconveniently great amount of light to pass. At the same time he noticed, in the various experiments, that the images of the sun were of different colors. This suggested the question as to whether there was not a different heating power proper to each color of the spectrum. On comparing the readings of sensitive thermometers exposed in different portions of an intense solar spectrum, he found that, beginning with the violet end, he came to the maximum of light long before that of heat, which lay at the other extremity, that is, near the red. By several experiments it appeared that the maximum of illumination, i. e., the yellow, had little more than half the heat of the full red rays; and from other experiments he concluded that even the full red fell short of the maximum of heat, which, perhaps, lay even a little beyond the limits of the visible spectrum.

"In this case," he says, "radiant heat will at least partly, if not chiefly, consist, if I may be permitted the expression, of invisible light; that is to say, of rays coming from the sun, that have such a momentum[35] as to be unfit for vision. And admitting, as is highly probable, that the organs of sight are only adapted to receive [Pg 183] impressions from particles of a certain momentum, it explains why the maximum of illumination should be in the middle of the refrangible rays; as those which have greater or less momenta are likely to become equally unfit for the impression of sight."

In his second paper on this subject, published in the same year, Herschel describes the experiments which led to the conclusion given above. This paper contains a remarkably interesting passage which admirably illustrates Herschel's philosophic method.

"To conclude, if we call light, those rays which illuminate objects, and radiant heat, those which heat bodies, it may be inquired whether light be essentially different from radiant heat? In answer to which I would suggest that we are not allowed, by the rules of philosophizing, to admit two different causes to explain certain effects, if they may be accounted for by one. . . . If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat."

We now know that the reasoning and conclusion here given are entirely correct, but they have for their basis only a philosophical conception, and not a series of experiments designed especially to test their correctness. Such an experimental test of this important question was the motive for a third and last paper in this department of physics. This paper was published in volume ninety of the Philosophical Transactions, and gave the results of two hundred and nineteen quantitative experiments.

Here we are at a loss to know which to admire most—the marvellous skill evinced in acquiring such accurate data with such inadequate means, and in varying and testing such a number of questions as were suggested in the course of the investigation—or the intellectual power shown in marshalling and reducing to a system such intricate and apparently self-contradictory phenomena. It is true that this discussion led him to a different conclusion from that announced in the previous paper, and, consequently, to a false conclusion; but almost the only escape from his course of reasoning lay in a principle which belongs to a later period of intellectual development than that of Herschel's own time.

Herschel made a careful determination of the quantitative distribution of light and of heat in the prismatic spectrum, and discovered the surprising fact that not only where the light was at a maximum the heat was very inconsiderable, but that where there was a maximum exhibition of heat, there was not a trace of light.

"This consideration," he writes, "must alter the form of our proposed inquiry; for the question being thus at least partly decided, since it is ascertained that we have rays of heat which give no light, it can only become a subject of inquiry whether some of these heat-making rays may not have a power of rendering objects visible, superadded to their now already established power of heating bodies. This being the case, it is evident that the onus probandi ought to lie with those who are willing to establish such an hypothesis, for it does not appear that Nature is in the habit of using one and the same mechanism with any two of our senses. Witness the vibration of air that makes sound, the effluvia that occasion smells, the particles that produce taste, the resistance or repulsive powers that affect the touch—all these are evidently suited to their respective organs of sense."

It is difficult to see how the fallacy of this argument could have been detected by any one not familiar with the fundamental physiological law that the nature of a sensation is in no wise determined by the character of the agent producing it, but only by the character of the nerves acted upon; but, as already intimated, this law belongs to a later epoch than the one we are considering. Herschel thus finally concluded that light and radiant heat were of essentially different natures, and upon this supposition he explained all of the phenomena which his numerous experiments had shown him. So complete and satisfactory did this work appear to the scientific world, that for a long time the question was looked upon as closed, and not until thirty-five years later was there any dissent. Then the Italian physicist, Melloni, with instrumental means a thousand times more delicate than that of Herschel, and with a far larger store of cognate phenomena, collected during the generation which had elapsed, to serve as a guide, discovered the true law. This, as we have seen, was at first adopted by Herschel on philosophical grounds, and then rejected, since he did not at that time possess the key which alone could have enabled him to properly interpret his experiments.

It is well to summarize the capital discoveries in this field made by Herschel, more particularly because his claims as a discoverer seem to have been strangely overlooked by historians of the development of physical science. He, before any other investigator, showed that radiant heat is refracted according to the laws governing the refraction of light by transparent media; that a portion of the radiation from the sun is incapable of exciting the sensation of vision, and that this portion is the less refrangible; that the different colors of the spectrum possess very unequal heating powers, which are not proportional to their luminosity; that substances differ very greatly in their power of transmitting radiant heat, and that this power does not depend solely upon their color; and that the property of diffusing heat is possessed to a varying degree by different bodies, independently of their color. Nor should we neglect to emphasize, in this connection, the importance of his measurements of the intensity of the heat and light in the different portions of the solar spectrum. It is the more necessary to state Herschel's claims clearly, as his work has been neglected by those who should first have done him justice. In his "History of Physics," Poggendorff has no reference to Herschel. In the collected works of Verdet, long bibliographical notes are appended to each chapter, with the intention of exhibiting the progress and order of discovery. But all of Herschel's work is overlooked, or indexed under the name of his son. One little reference in the text alone shows that his very name was not unknown. Even in the great work of Helmholtz on physiological optics, Herschel's labors are not taken account of.