The Nernst Lamp
edisontechcenter.org
edisontechcenter.org
Even though it's now been 101 years since he earned the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his thermodynamic advances.
>Nernst's laboratory discovered that at low temperatures specific heats fell markedly and would probably disappear at absolute zero. This fall was predicted for liquids and solids in a 1909 paper of Albert Einstein's on the quantum mechanics of specific heats at cryogenic temperatures. Nernst was so impressed that he traveled all the way to Zurich to visit Einstein, who was relatively unknown in Zurich in 1909, so people said: "Einstein must be a clever fellow if the great Nernst comes all the way from Berlin to Zurich to talk to him."[12]
>Nernst and Planck lobbied to establish a special professorship in Berlin and Nernst donated to its endowment. In 1913 they traveled to Switzerland to persuade Einstein to accept it; a dream job: a named professorship at the top university in Germany, without teaching duties, leaving him free for research.[13]
...and now I'm imagining someone making a video a century from now of repairing a CCFL and showing it working.
Are there any particularly old books that are interesting?
Here's a 19th century one:
https://archive.org/details/practicaltreatis00gord
This one is all about Nernst lamps:
https://archive.org/details/DevelopmentOfTheNernstLampInAmer...