Nouvelles proprietes des rayons cathodiques in Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de L'Academie des Sciences, 121, 1895, pp. 1130-1134 [FIRST EDITION, ORIGINAL WRAPS IN HANDSOME CUSTOM CASE]

ORIGINAL WRAPS, full issue 121 housed in a handsome custom case. FIRST EDITION OF AN IMPORTANT PAPER IN WHICH THE FRENCH PHYSICIST JEAN PERRIN PROVES UNEQUIVOCALLY NOT JUST THAT CATHODE RAYS TRANSPORT CHARGE , BUT THAT "CATHODE RAYS CONSIST OF NEGATIVELY CHARGED MATTER MOVING WITH CONSIDERABLY VELOCITY" (Magee, Source Book in Physics, 580).

In late 1895, "a young French graduate student J. Perrin confirmed the corpuscular nature of cathode rays. In order to settle the difference between the opposing views of Goldstein, Hertz, and Lenard on the one hand, and Crookes and Thomson on the other hand, [Perrin in this experiment] collected the cathode rays in a metal cups, which acted as a Faraday cyliner, just before they struck the glass wall, and found that they gave a negative charge, which he measured with an electroscope.

To confirm his experiment, Perrin showed that if the cathode rays are deflected by a magnet no charge is detected by the electroscope. He was also successful in carrying out the same experiment for the rays travelling in the opposite sense, and showed that they carried a positive charge" (Authier, Early Days of X-ray Crystallography, 66). However "not everyone was convinced that this was not an incidental effect of the radiation that produced fluorescence in screens. J. J. Thomson wasn't so sure, and in 1897, he replicated Perrin's experiment using a modified tube, and adding an external magnet to deflect cathode rays. As Thomson interpreted his results, "the negative charge and the cathode rays must somehow be connected" (Prutchi, Exploring Quantum Physics). In other words, Thomson found that the electricity always followed the cathode rays. This result, then, was Thomson's first paper leading to his discovery of the electron and its properties.

ALSO INCLUDED: the first edition of two papers in which the French astronomers Puiseux and Loewy detail the pioneering work that lead to their magnificent and landmark lunar atlas, 'the ultimate achievement of nineteenth-century astronomical photography" (The Photobook: A History, Vol. I, p. 54). CONDITION & DETAILS: Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1895, 4to. In Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de L'Academie des Sciences, 121. Entire volume. Ex-libris bearing only a deaccessioned stamp on the back of the title page and slight ghosting at the spine where a spine level has been removed. Quarto (11 x 8 inches; 275 x 200mm). Bound in clean full blue cloth, gilt-lettered at the spine. Solidly and tightly bound. Clean and bright throughout.