IV. On a method of meteorological registration of the chemical action of total daylight

Abstract

The aim of the present communication is to describe a simple mode of measuring the chemical action of total daylight, adapted to the purpose of regular meteorological registration. This method is founded upon that described by Prof. Bunsen and the author in their last Memoir on Photochemical Measurements, depending upon the law that equal products of the intensity of the acting light into the times of insolation correspond within very wide limits to equal shades of tints produced upon chloride-of-silver paper of uniform sensitiveness—light of the intensity 50, acting for the time 1, thus producing the same blackening effect as light of the intensity 1 acting for the time 50. For the purpose of exposing this paper to light for a known but very short length of time, a pendulum photometer was constructed; and by means of this instrument a strip of paper is so exposed that the different times of insolation for all points along the length of the strip can be calculated to within small fractions of a second, when the duration and amplitude of vibration of the pendulum are known. The strip of sensitive paper insolated daring the oscillation of the pendulum exhibits throughout its length a regularly diminishing shade from dark to white; and by reference to a Table, the time needed to produce any one of these shades can be ascertained. The unit of photo-chemical action is assumed to be that intensity of light which produces in the unit of time (one second) a given but arbitrary degree of shade termed the standard tint. The reciprocals of the times during which the points on the strip have to be exposed in order to attain the standard tint, give the intensities of the acting light expressed in terms of the above unit. By means of this method a regular series of daily observations can be kept up without difficulty; the whole apparatus needed can be packed up into small space; the observations can be carried on without regard to wind or weather; and no less than forty-five separate determinations can be made upon 36 square centimetres of sensitive paper. Strips of the standard chloride-of-silver paper tinted in the pendulum photometer remain as the basis of the new mode of measurement. Two strips of this paper are exposed as usual in the pendulum photometer: one of these strips is fixed in hyposulphite-of-sodium solution, washed, dried, and pasted upon a board, furnished with a millimetre-scale. This fixed strip is now graduated in terms of the unfixed pendulum strip by reading off, by the light of a soda-flame, the position of those points on each strip which possess equal degrees of tint, the position of the standard tint upon the unfixed strip being ascertained for the purpose of the graduation. Upon this comparison with the unfixed pendulum strip depends the subsequent use of the fixed strip. A detailed description of the methods of preparing and graduating the strips, and of the apparatus for exposure and reading, is next given. The following conditions must be fulfilled in order that the method may be adopted as a trustworthy mode of measuring the chemical action of light:— 1st. The tint of the standard strips fixed in hyposulphite must remain perfectly unalterable during a considerable length of time. 2nd. The tints upon these fixed strips must shade regularly into each other, so as to render possible an accurate comparison with, and graduation in terms of, the unfixed pendulum strips. 3rd. Simultaneous measurements made with different strips thus graduated must show close agreement amongst themselves, and they must give the same results as determinations made by means of the pendulum photometer, according to the method described in the last memoir.