Use of petroleum as fuel in Russia

✍ Scribed by C.

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1882
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 60 KB
• Volume: 113
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-0032(82)90164-8

✦ Synopsis

Use of Petroleum (~s Fuel. 229 of atmospheric vapor, a large amount of the ultra-red rays would assuredly be restored to the solar spectrum. This conclusion has'been recently established on the grandest scale by Professor Langley, -who .on the 10th of September wrote to the lecturer from an elevation of 12,000 feet on Mount Whitney, "where the air is perhaps drier than at any other equal altitude ever used for scientific investigation." An extract from Professor Langley's letter will fitly close this summary: "You may," he says, "be interested in knowing that the result indicates a great difference in the distribution of the solar energy here from that to which we are accustomed in regions of ordinary humidity, .and that while the evidence of the et~bct of water vapor on the more refrangible rays is feeble, there is, on the other hand, a systematic effect, due to its absence, which shows, by contrast, its power on the red and ultra-red in a striking light. These experiments also indicate an enornmus extension of the ultra-red rays beyond the point to which they had been followed below, and being made on a scale different from that of the laboratory--on one indeed as grand as nature can furnish--and by means wholly independent of those usually applied ,to the research, must, I think, when published, put an end to any .doubt as to the accuracy of the statements so long since made by you, .as to the absorbent power of water-vapor over the greater part of the spectrum, and as to its predominant importance in modifying to us `the solar energy."--Proceedings Royal Society.