On the 13th of July of this year, at 9 p.m., I was watching a heavy storm in Brooklyn, New York; and my attention was directed to one great blinding flash of lightning, which, starting almost at the zenith, blazed across the sky and came to earth in some region unknown. I never saw a more vivid flash. It ought to have particularly riveted my attention, but it did not, and for this reason: It had just so happened that I had become interested in what are side flashes, or what are called "supplementary" ones. Now the question has been mooted as to what is the character of what seems to our vision to be second flashes—that is, apparent flights of electrical fluid coincident with the first or strongest one, and some scientific men think that as often as not we see the reflection of the important flash mirrored by the clouds in many different directions.
Intent on that side issue, though appreciative of the main discharge, my attention was called to two lines of lesser brilliancy which appeared to the right. "If," I said, "somebody had only photographed it all, how glad I should be!"
Imagine my pleasure when next day Julius Roger, Jun., an amateur photographer living next door to me, casually asked me "whether I had noticed the lightning of the night before"? My reply was "that I had noted it"; but I did not mention what I thought was a special feature of the electrical display.
"Here is one flash I took," said the young gentleman, and he showed me the photograph, an exact copy of which illustrates this article. On examining it, the first thing I did was to look for the particular side show, and there it was.
"Did you notice these?" I asked, pointing to the two cross lines.
"Not," said the young gentleman, "when I took the picture. I went for the main flash. When the picture was developed, then they came out, and they surprised me." I asked the photographer how the print was produced. This is his exact reply:
"It was about nine. I noticed the storm, and that the lightning appeared in the same westerly direction. There were quite a number of flashes coming in succession from the same quarter of the heavens. I pointed my camera to that position, leaving it exposed. When that particular flash made its appearance it impressed itself on the sensitive plate. Then I quickly closed the camera and developed the plate. The picture was taken on a Crown Cramer plate, which I believe to be particularly sensitive."
"You have certainly been on the watch for such a picture for a long time," I said.
My photographer's—who is a singularly modest young gentleman—reply was, "Maybe he had."
Looking at the print it will be seen how the effect of the brilliancy of the flash is heightened because of the intervention of a steeple, and there is even a luminous spot in the window of the steeple, where the lightning shines through it. The two side flashes are perfectly shown to the right. The exact time having been noted, I found out that this particular flash of lightning demolished a house in New Jersey, the distance of which from Brooklyn was, as the crow flies, nineteen miles.