THE MERCURY ARC AS AN ACTINIC STROBOSCOPIC LIGHT SOURCE

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Abstract
Stroboscopic light sources capable of producing sufficient actinic light to take a photograph with a single flash are described in this paper. The duration of the main flash is of the order of 10−5 seconds, depending upon the circuit arrangement and the temperature of the light-pulse tube. The light has been very useful for obtaining stroboscopic motion pictures of the hunting of synchronous motors, the surges of gasoline-engine valve springs, vibrations of mechanisms, etc. Also, motion pictures have been taken upon continuously-moving film at a rate of 480 pictures a second with a camera which has neither a shutter nor an intermittent motion. (Recently the speed has been increased to 4200 pictures per second.) The fundamental idea is to discharge considerable electrical energy into a mercury-arc tube by means of an electrical transient, which is usually obtained from a condenser discharge. The gaseous discharge is capable of giving a flash of very short duration of high instantaneous intensity. Several methods of actuating the flash are described.

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