Crookes
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Crookes. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SIR WILLIAM, an Engof Chemistry under Hofmann, and after don in 1832; studied at the Royal College 1851 devoted himself to original researches in science. He invented the radiometer in 1875, and the otheoscope covery of the fourth or ultra-gaseous in 1877, and announced in 1879 his disstate of matter. In 1880 the French Académie des Sciences bestowed on him and a gold medal in recognition of his an extraordinary prize of 3,000 francs discoveries in molecular physics and ra- SIR WILLIAM CROOKES diant matter. In 1881 he acted as juror at the International Exhibition of Electricwas not entitled to a medal, but in the ity in Paris. In this official position he official report his fellow jurors, after discussing the merits of four systems of incandescent lamps, declared-"None of 14-Vol . III-Cyc them would have succeeded had it not been for these extreme vacua which Mr. Crookes has taught us to manage." It is stated that he was the first to apply photography to the investigation of the solar spectrum. He is the author of "Select Methods in Chemical Analysis," "Manufacture of Beet-root Sugar in England," "Handbook of Dyeing and Calico-Printing," "Manual of Dyeing and Tissue-Printing," etc. He is also joint author of the English adaptation of Kerl's "Treatise on Metallurgy." He has edited the last three editions of Mitchell's "Manual of Practical Assaying," and has translated into English and edited Reimann's "Aniline and its Derivatives," Wagner's "Chemical Technology," Auerbach's "Anthracen and its Derivatives," and Ville's "Artificial Manures." He is an authority on sanitary questions, especially the disposal of town-sewage. In 1907 he shared the Nobel prize for Chemistry with E. Buchner, and in 1910 was awarded the Order of Merit. He died on April 4, 1919.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
William, an English electrician and chemist. He was born in London June 17, 1832. He was educated at Oxford. At thirty-one he was a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1897 he was knighted for brilliant discoveries in physics. He is the author of a number of practical works pertaining to the manufacture of beet root sugar, dyeing, the sewage question, etc. He is best known, however, as the inventor of Crookes' tubes. They are sealed glass bulbs or tubes from which the air has been exhausted to a high degree of rarefaction. Sir William Crookes discovered that by passing electrical currents through these tubes they were lighted up brilliantly with green, pink, and many other colors, highly suggestive of the northern lights. See X RAYS.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's, writing in 1921 two years after Crookes's death, credits him with announcing "the fourth or ultra-gaseous state of matter" in 1879; that state is now called plasma, a name Irving Langmuir gave it in the 1920s, and it is reckoned the most common form of ordinary matter in the universe. The Crookes tube that Aiton's describes in 1910 as glowing "green, pink, and many other colors" turned out to be the doorway to modern physics: Rontgen found X-rays coming off one in 1895, and J. J. Thomson used one in 1897 to identify the electron. Both entries also pass over the discovery that first made Crookes's name, the element thallium in 1861, and neither mentions the years he spent investigating mediums and seances for the Society for Psychical Research, which is now as much discussed as his physics. Two details in the old texts are simply wrong: Crookes never won a Nobel Prize (the 1907 chemistry prize went to Eduard Buchner alone), and he studied at the Royal College of Chemistry in London, not at Oxford.
Written for this edition, 2026.