JamesWhitehead
Piffle Prospector
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,201
Presumably the Babinet meant is This Lovely Looking Fellow
But I can find no reference to his electric pussy anywhere except here:
QUOTE BEGINS:
It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty.
"The discovery consists," he says, "in subjecting the vapors of volatile liquids to the action of concentrated sun-light, or to the concentrated beam of the electric light." The vapors of certain nitrites, iodides, and acids are subjected to the action of the light in an experimental tube, lying horizontally, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and that of the parallel beams issuing from the lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in nests of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves, and of involved scrolls. "In one case," he tells us, "the cloud-bud grew rapidly into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged." Finally, to cap the climax of marvels, "once it positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills, and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other."
These phenomena may possibly be explained in part by the mechanical action of a beam of light, which Mr. Crookes has recently demonstrated. For instance, it is a supposable case, that the beams of light may have constituted a horizontal axis, about which the disturbed molecules of the vapors gathered into the forms of globes and spindles. But how account for the fish, the serpent's head, the vases, the flowers of different varieties, the shells? This seems to offer a dilemma to science as baffling as the meteor-cat of Babinet. We do not learn that Tyndall ventured as absurd an explanation of his extraordinary phenomena as that of the Frenchman about his.
Those who have not given attention to the subject may be surprised to find how much was known in former days of that all-pervading, subtile principle which has recently been baptized THE UNIVERSAL ETHER.
END QUOTE
The so-called Tyndall Experiment is one of my favourite weird paragraphs. I lost it for a long time and was overjoyed to remember that Tyndall was the name I had forgotten. Doing the search, it is disappointing to learn that the only authority seems to be Helena Blavatsky and those juicily mad ideas are to be found nowhere in Tyndall's real notes or published works. And yet . . .
The account I read some years ago was more extended and it described Tyndall sacrificing various animals next to his gas-tanks so that their forms would appear momentarily at the instant of death. It was on the About site, which gathers curious material without much fact-checking. Anyway, it seems to have vanished.
So we are left with H. P. B.'s Isis Unveiled, Part One, Chapter Five - there are dozens of sites with assorted translations. Her supporters marvelled that she used no reference books and her works were supposedly dictated by the Ascended Masters.
That leaves the trail of the meteor-cat. I find that Babinet does share one web-page with a discussion of Schrödinger's more famous feline but he postdates Isis Unveiled. Not that time should matter much to the Ascended Masters!
So, can anyone shed light on this curious reference? :miaow:
But I can find no reference to his electric pussy anywhere except here:
QUOTE BEGINS:
It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty.
"The discovery consists," he says, "in subjecting the vapors of volatile liquids to the action of concentrated sun-light, or to the concentrated beam of the electric light." The vapors of certain nitrites, iodides, and acids are subjected to the action of the light in an experimental tube, lying horizontally, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and that of the parallel beams issuing from the lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in nests of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves, and of involved scrolls. "In one case," he tells us, "the cloud-bud grew rapidly into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged." Finally, to cap the climax of marvels, "once it positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills, and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other."
These phenomena may possibly be explained in part by the mechanical action of a beam of light, which Mr. Crookes has recently demonstrated. For instance, it is a supposable case, that the beams of light may have constituted a horizontal axis, about which the disturbed molecules of the vapors gathered into the forms of globes and spindles. But how account for the fish, the serpent's head, the vases, the flowers of different varieties, the shells? This seems to offer a dilemma to science as baffling as the meteor-cat of Babinet. We do not learn that Tyndall ventured as absurd an explanation of his extraordinary phenomena as that of the Frenchman about his.
Those who have not given attention to the subject may be surprised to find how much was known in former days of that all-pervading, subtile principle which has recently been baptized THE UNIVERSAL ETHER.
END QUOTE
The so-called Tyndall Experiment is one of my favourite weird paragraphs. I lost it for a long time and was overjoyed to remember that Tyndall was the name I had forgotten. Doing the search, it is disappointing to learn that the only authority seems to be Helena Blavatsky and those juicily mad ideas are to be found nowhere in Tyndall's real notes or published works. And yet . . .
The account I read some years ago was more extended and it described Tyndall sacrificing various animals next to his gas-tanks so that their forms would appear momentarily at the instant of death. It was on the About site, which gathers curious material without much fact-checking. Anyway, it seems to have vanished.
So we are left with H. P. B.'s Isis Unveiled, Part One, Chapter Five - there are dozens of sites with assorted translations. Her supporters marvelled that she used no reference books and her works were supposedly dictated by the Ascended Masters.
That leaves the trail of the meteor-cat. I find that Babinet does share one web-page with a discussion of Schrödinger's more famous feline but he postdates Isis Unveiled. Not that time should matter much to the Ascended Masters!
So, can anyone shed light on this curious reference? :miaow:
