“On Certain Physical Properties of Light Produced by the Combustion of Different Metals in an Electric Spark Refracted by a Prism.” [Pp. 213–214 in:] The American Journal of Science and Arts, Second Series, No. 56—March, 1855.

David Alter on the Expansion of Spectrum Analysis, 1855

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An augmentation of David Alter’s 1854 pioneering paper in this same journal that first introduced emission spectrum analysis. Here Alter extended his study beyond metals to include the optical properties of gases, reinforcing the idea that each element produces its own distinct set of spectral lines when excited in an electric spark. Alter’s contribution remains one of the earliest published attempts to establish spectral analysis as a reliable tool for elemental identification.

Alter includes a subsection, “On Daguerreotyping the dark lines in the Solar Spectrum,” describing his attempt to record Fraunhofer lines with early photography. By directing sunlight through brass slips, a prism, and a lens onto a sensitized daguerreotype plate, he captured dark lines with exposures of one to two seconds. The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists notes: “Although the significance of this work was not recognized in the USA at that time, his idea was experimentally verified in about 1860 in Germany by Robert Bunsen and Gustav C. Kirchhoff.”

David Alter (1807–1881), a Pennsylvania physician-inventor-physicist, worked largely in isolation from the European scientific community but arrived independently at insights of global significance. His demonstration that both metals and gases yield unique emission spectra positioned him as a true pioneer of spectroscopy, though later overshadowed by Bunsen and Kirchhoff. Alter’s contribution remains one of the earliest published attempts to establish spectral analysis as a reliable tool for elemental identification.

Very scarce in its original printed wrappers, with important contributions by Agassiz, Schoolcraft and others, including the first part of J. Lawrence Smith’s well-illustrated “Memoir on Meteorites.”

Price: $350.00