A comment of the paper by sten von friesen "on the values of fundamental atomic constants"

Abstract

My attention has been drawn to certain statements in this paper (von Friesen 1937) about the early measurements of the mass of negatively charged particles in gas. As it is generally understood that papers published by the Society have been recommended by one or more persons who are knowing and well skilled in the particular branch of natural knowledge to which the paper relates, and as these statements are contrary to the account which I have given of these constants in my book “ Electricity in Gases”, I may be permitted to point out that I am unable to find any support for the statements in question, and that there is an important omission. I stated that Schuster (1890), in measuring e/m for negatively charged particles in a gas at low pressures, found numbers not much greater than the values for charged atoms. If e is in electromagnetic units, the value for hydrogen is about 10 4 . Von Friesen, on the other hand, says that the first determinations of e/m were made by Schuster and J. J. Thomson, and that they found values of about 10 7 ; but as von Friesen makes no reference to any of Schuster’s publications I do not know where his information comes from.