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Show Putting the Sun-. beam to Work ' THE) wonderful "X-ray," by means of which an Italian inventor experimenting under military direction has proved, it is claimed, that the explosives in an enemy's magazine or on board of a hostile warship can be "set off" at a distance of miles, is merely part of an ordinary sunbeam. This will be better understood when it is explained that the now-familiar X-ray is part of the sunbeam; and so, likewise, are the rays that carry "wireless" messages. Only within the last very few years has it come to be realized that the every-day sunbeam is vastly more complex than was hitherto supposed. It is a bundle made up of many different kinds of things, and, it addition to light and heat, it carries electricity, and goodness knows what else. The sunbeam, or part of it, when suitably employed, may yet become the most formidable of all instruments instru-ments of warfare It is by no means inconceivable that its development as such may arrive before the close of the great conflict that is now going on in Europe. More than one idea formed in the imagination of ingenious fiction writers has been translated into accomplished ac-complished fact during the present war notably the use of poisonous gas-clouds and Conan Doyle's suggestion sugges-tion of a submarine blockade to destroy England's commerce. It was H G. Wells who described the frightful destructive power of a "heat ray" employed by invading foes from Mars, which annihilated every living thing against which it was directed. Science has been taking the sunbeam to pieces, as a child does with a toy. to find out what it is made of. Thus we have been made aware that only a very small part of it carries light which means, of course, that only a relative few of its rays are able to affect the retina of the eyes. Another part, much larger, -carries heat, and upon this the farmer depends mainly for the growing of his crops. When Roentgen, by a lucky accident, discovered the X-rays, it was an invisible piece of the sunbeam that he hit upon and utilized. Another portion is composed of electric rays, which are used for transmitting wireless wire-less messages. It appears, then, that we are putting the sunbeam to work, and obliging it to do things which used not to be regarded as in any way its business Young Mr Hammond is actually employing it (the wireless part of it, that is to say) to steer a new-fangled submarine torpedo, which, when his invention is perfected, will be controllable from shore at a distance of many miles by merely viewing it with a telescope and pushing a couple of buttons to turn the rudder this way and that. How, one might ask, Is it possible to take a sunbeam to pieces and find out what it is made of? To take it to pieces is the simplest thing in the world; any child can do it with the help of a glass prism. The child finds the experiment amusing, for the sunbeam, sun-beam, coming in at a window and thrown through the prism upon a wall, is split up into a series of color bands, with violet at one end and red at the other. But, quite naturally, it never occurs to the child's mind nor did it so occur to that of the philisopher until recently that the visible color bands represent only a very small part of the sunbeam thus taken to pieces by the prism. The child's eye cannot perceive the bands of invisible rays which extend far above the violet strip at one end of the color "spectrum" and far below the red strip at the other end. This is where always-inquisitive science has taken up the problem The question set before it is, What are the rays above the violet and below the red? ' What is their nature and for what purposes can they be utilized? To a considerable extent this problem has already ' been solved We know that above the violet band are mo3t of the rays that affect the photographic plate; they are chemical rays, which is the reason wy Be. Iow the red band are nearly all of the heat rays of the sunbeam J Below the heat region are the electrlo rays, used to carry wireless messages. Above the "ultra-violpt part, that enables the every-day photographer to take his pictures, is a region in which photograpsh can Btill be taken (all other rays being excluded), but only in vacuum. Far above the latter region is the home of the mys-terious mys-terious X-rays, to which human flesh is transparent. With their help "shadowgraphs" can be made, showing show-ing the bones of the skeleton or a bullet embedded la a bone. During the present war the X-rays have saved the lives of thousands of wounded men. Most Interesting of all, however, from our present point of view, are the regions of the sunbeam (thus split up) which remain as yet unexplored There is such a region below the heat band, separating the latter lat-ter from the home of the electric rays beneath There is another beyond the vacuum-photographic, and before be-fore the X-rays are reached. There is yet another b. yond the X-rays. Who can say what unsuspected marvels lie in these unknown regions of Invisible light, or to what pur- , po?es may be applied the unidentified rays which they contain? They may revolutionize warfare, they may pven he destined to control the march of future drill-tanon |