The paper contains some personal reflections on Rutherford as a scientist and as a person. It describes his remarkable initial work on radio in Canterbury College, Christchurch, New Zealand, after the work of Hertz, which was then continued in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. It is likely that Rutherford was ahead of Marconi in 1895. Here also he used the photo-emissive effect (discovered by Hertz) in his work with J. J. Thomson. He then switched in 1897 to X-rays and radioactivity. The paper then returns to the origin of opto-electronics by the discovery of the electrical effect of light by E. Becquerel in 1839 (
C. r. hebd. Séanc. Acad. Sci., Paris
9, 145; 561). The development of transmission of information by electrical signals over wires which led to Bell’s telephone in 1876 is outlined, and the discovery of the photo-conductive effect in 1873, which led to an outburst of ideas for television and the first real demonstration by Ayrton & Perry in 1880 (
Jl B. Soc. Arts
29, 468). H ertz’s two discoveries (used by Rutherford), the discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson, and the invention of the Braun tube in 1897 gave a great boost to the idea of television. The major idea that came from A. A. Campbell Swinton in about 1903 was that the cathode ray tube was the key to successful television. This was published in the epochmaking note in
Nature, Lond
. in 1908 which laid the foundation for modern television.
The effect of light, temperature and desiccation on differential stability of mrna, from spring and winter wheat seedlings