Sir George Paget Thomson (1892-1975) was British physicist who won the 1937 Nobel Prize for his experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals. This glass slide—an electron diffraction image of copper taken by Thomson and his student Alexander Reid—is a copy, made at the Smithsonian, of an original borrowed from Thomson, for an exhibit on “35 Years With Electrons As Waves.”
Ref: George Paget Thomson, “Early Work in Election Diffraction,” American Journal of Physics 29 (1961): 1-15.
Glass lantern slide in a rectangular wooden frame. The front of the frame is incised “T.H. MC ALLISTER / OPTICIAN N.Y.” A paper label on one edge reads “ASTRONOMY -- 19. Comparative Size of the Sun and Planets.”
Glass lantern slide in a rectangular wooden frame. The front of the frame is incised “T.H. MC ALLISTER / OPTICIAN N.Y.” One edge is marked “INTERESTING SUBJECT” and, in ink, [Atmospheric Lines].” The slide itself is marked “THE ATMOSPHERIC LINES” and “The brilliant lines of the aurora borealis.”.
This mechanical lantern slide has a wooden frame, and a glass disc divided into fourteen (or twice seven) segments, each representing a color of the rainbow; when the disc is rotated rapidly, it appears white.
In the optical experiments that he described to the Royal Society in 1672, Isaac Newton showed that a prism would disperse sunlight into a spectrum, and identified what he deemed the seven basic colors of this spectrum. In his Opticks (London, 1717), Newton discussed the persistence of vision, noting that a burning coal moved quickly in a circle appears as a continuous circle. Newton’s Color Disc combines these two ideas.
Ref: Lorenzo Marcy, The Sciopticon Manual (Philadelphia, 1877), p. 31.
Glass lantern slide in rectangular wooden frame. The image at left shows the earth's orbit around the sun and the solistices. The second and the third images show the moon in different positions around earth, with its tidal pull.
Sir George Paget Thomson (1892-1975) was British physicist who won the 1937 Nobel Prize for his experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals. This glass slide—an electron diffraction image of lead oxide, taken by Thomson and his student Alexander Reid—is a copy, made at the Smithsonian, of an original borrowed from Thomson, for an exhibit on “35 Years With Electrons As Waves.”
Ref: George Paget Thomson, “Early Work in Election Diffraction,” American Journal of Physics 29 (1961): 1-15.