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

All through the thirties Wood continued his experimental work. But he was internationally famous now, and in demand everywhere to attend learned societies and receive rewards and medals. All through the decade he was leaping from America to Europe and back again, and always finding time for a strenuous social life and his terrible poltergeist pranks.

He was asked to write the article on fluorescence for the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He wanted to reproduce a picture of the human face taken by the light of the ultraviolet lamp he’d invented during the war. By these invisible rays, the whitest skin appears dark chocolate, the teeth shine with a ghostly blue light, and the pupil of the eye appears white instead of dark. As he was crossing one of the university corridors he said to a pretty typist, to whom he had never said anything before except a vague good morning: “How would you like to have your picture in the next edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica?”

“What on earth, Dr. Wood? You’re kidding me, of course!” “Not at all. I mean it. Would you like to?”

“Why, yes! But how, and why?”

“Come along”, he said, “and let me take your photograph. It’s to illustrate the article I’m writing, and I want a pretty girl for it”.

He took her to his laboratory, set up the camera, lighted the ultraviolet lamp, drew the black window shades down, and made the exposure. A year later as he passed the office, he said, “Look up the article on ‘Fluorescence’ in the library upstairs, and you’ll find your picture”. She did, and screeched, for her blonde face was black as any cornfield Negro’s. It’s the nearest thing to a mean joke Wood has ever played on a human being.

In 1929, he went back to London with Mrs. Wood and Elizabeth. On the boat were Dr. Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Yan- dell Henderson, Yale physiologist, and Sam Barlow, the composer… so the Woods had congenial company. The stay in London was as usual a combination of busman’s holiday for Wood, and fun for all of them.

John Balderston had a play in rehearsal at the Lyric in which the time was supposed to change from the present to 1783, during a moment while the stage was in darkness. How to make the switchback emotionally and psychologically effective was a problem which Wood offered to solve. His idea was that the lowest of all notes, subaudible but vibrating the eardrum, would produce an eerie sensation, and put the audience in a mood for what followed. It was accomplished with a super organ pipe, larger and longer than any used in church organs, and was tried out at the dress rehearsal. Only Wood, Leslie Howard, Balderston, and the producer, Gilbert Miller, in the small audience knew what was coming. A scream from the blackened stage indicated a time relapse of 145 years. The Wood subaudible note was turned on. An effect occurred like that which precedes an earthquake. The glass in every chandelier in the old Lyric commenced to tinkle, all the windows rattled. The whole building vibrated, and a wave of fear spread out to Shaftsbury Avenue. Miller ordered the so-and-so organ pipe thrown out immediately.

This, by the way, was only one of Wood’s ventures in the theater. Flo Ziegfeld, a neighbor of the Woods in East Hampton, was a frequent visitor to the barn laboratory, and after seeing the miracles effected by invisible light and other special rays, asked if Wood could devise a system of lights and costumes of special material which would disappear when the stage illumination changed, leaving the girls practically naked. Wood worked it out completely. To make it funny, the comedian was to appear with a chorus of girls in evening dress. He was to carry an “X-ray” field glass, and to explain that their clothes vanish when he looks at them. As he turned the glass on them, the lights would change, and they would appear stark naked to the audience. He was then to turn the X-ray field glass on the audience.

It was a little too soon for so daring a strip without the tease, and the act never went into production. Wood gave Ziegfeld other ideas, however, having mainly to do with stage lighting, which were incorporated in the Follies, year after year.

In 1934 Wood was elected vice-president of the American Physical Society and attended the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Section in Berkeley, California. The sessions were held in the buildings of the University of California, in conjunction with the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The attendance was large, and each member was required to wear a large button with his name on it.