COLOR TELEVISION MAKES AMERICAN DEBUT

The day when we shall not only see our distant friends as we talk to them over the telephone, but when we shall also see the flesh tints of their faces, the red of their lips, and the colors of their clothes, was brought nearer with the demonstration of color television at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York on June 27. Color television has been achieved previously in England, but the Bell demonstration was the first time that it had been done in this country, and much nearer perfection.

In one part of the laboratory building, a girl in a fancy dress sat in front of the transmitter, as shown on our cover picture. A group of newspapermen and scientists in the auditorium sat in front of the receiver and saw a faithful reproduction of her dress and features in all their natural hues. An American flag was held in front of the transmitter and the red, white and blue were immediately reproduced in the receiver. Flowers, fruit and other colored subjects were also transmitted.

EARTH RAYS MAY BE EVOLUTION CAUSE

Rays from the earth itself may be the exciting cause of evolutionary changes in animals and plants. Invisible, short-wave radiations, similar to those given off by radium, have been shown by two University of California experimenters, Dr. E.B. Babcock and Dr. J.L. Collins, to cause mutations, which are the type of change now believed to be responsible for most evolutionary development. This is the first experimental demonstration of an actual evolutionary driving force, emanating from the earth itself.

Not long ago, the scientific world was excited over the wholesale production of mutations by shooting heavy doses of X rays through the germ-plasm tissues of animals and plants. It was suggested then that similar changes might occur in nature, through the agency of similar radiations known to be given off by the earth. These natural rays are, of course, much feebler than the powerful units used in the laboratory, so that the number of mutations to be looked for in nature would be only a small fraction of those produced under the X-ray tube.

OXYGEN, LIFE GAS, PROVEN TRIPLETS

Oxygen, the gas which constitutes a fifth of the air we breathe, and which is essential to our life, is really triplets. It is not twins, as was recently suggested, or single, as it was thought for many years.

This has been discovered by two University of California experimenters, Prof. W.F. Giauque and H.L. Johnstone. They have found that oxygen in the air consists not only of the element with atomic weight of 16, but that there are small numbers of heavier atoms. Some weigh 17 and others weigh 18. These make up forms of oxygen which are like ordinary oxygen in all respects except atomic weight, and are called isotopes of oxygen. Many other elements, notably lead, have been found to have isotopes, chemically similar, but of different weight.

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