Doctor Wood. Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: The Story of an American Small Boy Who Became the Most Daring and Original Experimental Physicist of Our Day-but Never Grew Up

So I visited Nancy before rejoining my family in Paris, meeting Blondlot by appointment at his laboratory in the early evening. He spoke no English, and I elected German as our means of communication, as I wanted him to feel free to speak confidentially to his assistant, who was apparently a sort of high-class laboratory janitor.

He first showed me a card on which some circles had been painted in luminous paint. He turned down the gas light and called my attention to their increased luminosity when the N ray was turned on. I said that I saw no change. He said that was because my eyes were not sensitive enough, so that proved nothing. I asked him if I could move an opaque lead screen in and out of the path of the rays while he called out the fluctuations of the screen. He was almost 100 per cent wrong and called out fluctuations when I made no movement at all, and that proved a lot, but I held my tongue. He then showed me the dimly lighted clock, and tried to convince me that he could see the hands when he held a large flat file just above his eyes. I asked if I could hold the file, for I had noticed a flat wooden ruler on his desk, and remembered that wood was one of the few substances that never emitted N rays. He agreed to this, and I felt around in the dark for the ruler and held it in front of his face. Oh, yes, he could see the hands perfectly. This also proved something.

But the crucial and most exciting test was now to come. Accompanied by the assistant, who by this time was casting rather hostile glances at me, we went into the room where the spectroscope with the aluminum lenses and prism was installed. In place of an eyepiece, this instrument had a vertical thread, painted with luminous paint, which could be moved along in the region where the N-ray spectrum was supposed to be by turning a wheel having graduations and numerals on its rim. This wheel turned a horizontal screw with a movable nut on which the thread was mounted. Blondlot took a seat in front of the instrument and slowly turned the wheel. The thread was supposed to brighten as it crossed the invisible lines of the N-ray spectrum. He read off the numbers on the graduated scale for a number of the lines, by the light of a small, darkroom, red lantern. This experiment had convinced a number of skeptical visitors, as he could repeat his measurements in their presence, always getting the same numbers. He claimed that a movement of the thread of 0.1 mm. was sufficient to change the luminosity, and when I said that seemed impossible, as the slit of the spectroscope was 2 mm. wide, he said that was one of the inexplicable properties of the N rays. I asked him to repeat his measurements, and reached over in the dark and lifted the aluminum prism from the spectroscope. He turned the wheel again, reading off the same numbers as before. I put the prism back before the lights were turned up, and Blondlot told his assistant that his eyes were tired. The assistant had evidently become suspicious, and asked Blondlot to let him repeat the reading for me. Before he turned down the light I had noticed that he placed the prism very exactly on its little round support, with two of its corners exactly on the rim of the metal disk. As soon as the light was lowered, I moved over towards the prism, with audible footsteps, but I did not touch the prism.

The assistant commenced to turn the wheel, and suddenly said hurriedly to Blondlot in French, “I see nothing; there is no spectrum. I think the American has made some derangement”. Whereupon he immediately turned up the gas and went over and examined the prism carefully. He glared at me, but I gave no indication of my reactions. This ended the séance, and I caught the night train for Paris.

Next morning I sent off a letter to Nature, London’s scientific weekly, giving a full account of my findings, not, however, mentioning the double-crossing incident at the end of the evening and merely locating the laboratory as “one in which most of the N-ray experiments had been carried on”. La Revue scientifique”

, France’s weekly semipopular scientific journal, published a translation of my letter and started an Enquête, or inquiry, asking French scientists to express their opinions as to the reality of the N rays. About forty letters were published in the succeeding numbers, only a half dozen backing Blondlot. The most scathing was one by Le Bel, who said, “What a spectacle for French science when one of its distinguished savants measures the position of the spectrum lines, while the prism reposes in the pocket of his American colleague!”

Only two papers on N rays appeared in the Comptes rendus after this. They may have been delayed in the mail. The Academy at its annual meeting in December, when the prize and medal were presented, announced the award as given to Blondlot “for his life work, taken as a whole”.

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