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

The generator was an imposing affair. There were two huge Pliotron tubes of two kilowatts output, a huge bank of oil condensers, and a variable condenser with intersecting wings of the type familiar to every amateur radio operator, but about six feet high and two feet in diameter. Then there were the induction coil for stepping up the voltage and the circular quartz plate with its electrodes in an oil bath in a shallow glass dish. With this we generated an oscillatory electric potential of 50,000 volts at a frequency of from 200,000 to 500,000 alternations per second. This oscillating voltage applied to the electrodes on the quartz plate caused it to expand and contract at the same frequency, and generate supersonic waves in the oil, the pressure of which against the surface of the oil raised the thick liquid in a mound nearly two inches in height, surmounted by a fountain of oil drops some of which were projected to a height of a foot or more. We could conduct the sonic vibrations out of the oil into glass vessels and rods of various shapes by dipping them in the oil over the vibrating plate, and found they could be transmitted along a glass thread the size of a thick horsehair to a distance of a yard or more. If the end of the thread was held lightly between the thumb and finger, no sensation was produced, but if it was pinched it felt almost red hot, and in a second the skin was burnt white in the form of a groove. A thin glass rod when carrying the waves and pressed firmly against a pine stick caused it to emit smoke and sparks, the rod burning its way through the wood, leaving a hole with blackened edges. If a glass plate was substituted for the pine stick, the vibrating rod drilled its way through the plate, throwing out the displaced material in the form of a fine powder or minute fused globules of glass. If the waves were passed across the boundary separating two such liquids as oil and water or mercury and water, more or less stable emulsions were formed. Blood corpuscles were exploded, the red coloring matter escaping and staining the saline solution with which it had been mixed, making a clear transparent red like an aniline dye. These and a host of other new and interesting effects were discovered in the first two years of our experiments.

As the scope of the work expanded we were pressed for room in the garage and Mr. Loomis purchased the Spencer Trask house, a huge stone mansion with a tower, like an English country house, perched on the summit of one of the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains in Tuxedo Park. This he transformed into a private laboratory de luxe, with rooms for guests or collaborators, a complete machine shop with mechanic and a dozen or more research rooms large and small. I moved my forty-foot spectrograph from East Hampton and installed it in the basement of the laboratory so that I could continue my spectroscopic work in a better environment. Mr. Loomis had a new tube made for the instrument, since there was no point in digging up the underground sewer pipes which had served formerly. He packed the tube in boiler felt with an arrangement for keeping the entire tube at a constant temperature, had a new and better camera made, installed motors, revolution counters, etc., for rotating the grating, which was housed in a small closet built around the brick pier on which it was mounted, and arranged other substitutions and gadgets, until I told him there was nothing left of my celebrated spectrograph but the forty feet. It had experienced a “reincarnation”, and required no pussycat as housemaid.

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Loomis, who was anxious to meet some of the celebrated European physicists and visit their laboratories, asked Wood to go abroad with him. They made two trips together, one in the summer of 1926, the other in 1928. Going over on the Ile de France early in July, 1926, they were met at Plymouth by a Daimler in which they were driven to Hereford for a visit with Wood’s friend Thomas R. Merton, professor of physics at Oxford and now treasurer of the Royal Society. His estate bordered on the River Wye, and their arrival coincided with the salmon-fishing season. Merton had a fine private laboratory behind the house and some interesting experiments to show, but for once Loomis was excited over something other than physics. He waded in the Wye and landed a fifteen- pound salmon.