This first article was published July 29, 1923:
HE’D MAKE FORD RICH AND WOMEN PRETTY
New York Artist Wants manufacturer to Turn His Chemists Loose on “Luminon”.
GLOWS LIKE A SUNSET
“New Element”: Would Do a Lot of Other Things if Developed, Says Discoverer.
The discovery of a new principle which should enable scientists to find an entirely new element. “luminon,” is claimed by Walter Russell, real estate operator and artist, 366 Madison Avenue, in an open letter to Henry Ford, made public yesterday.
Mr. Russell advised the automobile manufacturer to put his chemists to work to find “luminon,” which he says exists in coal and copper and which he suggests should “yield not only a vast fortune for you but give immortality to those of your chemists who find it.”
The letter of Mr. Russell in part follows:
“This new element should be abundantly found locked up in coal or copper ore, or wherever zinc, gallium, arsenic, tin, antimony, lead, bismuth and any phosphoric or nitrogenous compounds are found. In luminon lies the solution of the cold light problem which shall be the light of the future.
The cold light magnetically radiated by means of luminon will make women very beautiful to look upon because of the absence of red and orange rays. Its color will be delightfully amber green, that marvelous saffron glow which follows the setting sun, just that color which all women realize enhances their beauty without the artificial touch.
“The principle involved is an unknown one and involves a high knowledge of the causes of electricity and magnetism beyond that of even the great experts of today. Therefore I will not confuse this letter by attempting to explain it here even simply.
“The principle is thoroughly familiar to me, and when I make it known it will open up chemical and electrical possibilities heretofore undreamed of. Especially will it simplify long distance communication and lengthen wireless range.
“This may seem like an amazing statement for a man to make who is professionally known as an artist and who is not even known in science. I am ready, however, to make good on still more amazing statements than this.
PRESENT “COLD LIGHT” ATTEMPTS FUTILE
“Attempts now being made to produce ‘cold light’ will fail commercially because they are based on absolutely wrong electro-magnetic principles and the effects produced are deathly and hideous.
Cold light produced this way transforms the rosy flesh of a woman into that of a corpse in appearance.
“The new element I shall describe is one of six for which seats await at the family table of the elements between hydrogen and helium. Three of these six elements should be found abundantly in coal, also one other, a new inert gas, which I have named ‘hydron’ because it immediately precedes hydrogen in the table of the elements having an atomic weight of approximately .9, while the hydrogen atom is given as 1.008.
“In all there are 131 to 133 distinct and separate elements, all of which 1 have charted and found a place for at the family table. Twenty-five are beyond hydrogen, six follow hydrogen and nine are beyond uranium.
“I am not only ready to prove the existence of all these but also to demonstrate conclusively that there can be no more, for the last one, ‘omeganon’, closes the door to the cycle which has its beginning at absolute zero and in ‘alphanon’ and ending in absolute equilibrium in ‘omeganon’ .
“To prophesy the existence of an undiscovered element seems strange to the uninitiated, but to the chemist or physicist the evidences of their existence are often as clear as the footprints of animals are to the hunter and woodsman.
“Because hydrogen is the only element which has no alpha particle nuclei it is not considered a ‘regular feller’ among the elements and the six empty seats have aroused not much concern.
WHERE LUMINON REALLY BELONGS
‘” Luminon’ will take her seat four places to the right of hydrogen at the table, with three intervening. This will bring her in the nitrogen group, hydrogen series, hydron octave.
(Note: I name each octave series by the inert gas which precedes it.) [H: This will have “helium” as its fulcrum keynote.] It will be strongly electro-negative. Its atomic weight will approximate 2.90. Its atomic volume will be about one-fourth the hydrogen atom. Its conductivity will be very high.
“You may justly ask what footprints or other indications lead me to believe in the presence of these particular animals in the forest, and more particularly ‘luminon’. If a hunter sees rabbit holes and bear tracks near a heap of feathers and bones he will not attribute all three to the rabbit. He will be certain of the presence of three distinct animals whose separate characteristics he is perfectly familiar with.
“The facts revealed to me by the ‘footprints of luminon’ in spectrum lines taught me the secret of the fire-fly, for the ability of the fire-fly or any other light-giving animal is due solely to their ability to store this gas within themselves and excite its luminosity at will.
TAKES ISSUE WITH MODERNISTS
“The electro-magnetic process which they use will be made clear when I make known my discovery of causes of positive and negative electricity and magnetism, also when I take issue with the modernists on their electro-magnetic theory of light as being waves in the ether.
“I shall then show that Newton was right in saying that light is corpuscular. I shall then show that ether waves are non-existent because the ether, as understood, is non-existent.”
Mr. Russell says it is quite possible to make a complete chart of the trail of “luminon” because “in helium it fairly sings its presence in the green line of wave length 4922.1 which is about 83 on Bunson’s chart,” and that there are evidences of it in one of the “triply green lines of neon”.
The real estate operator warns Mr. Ford that the latter’s chemists in looking for the new element “undoubtedly will confuse it with nitrogen because its strongest character lines in the green have been mistaken for nitrogen.
Mr. Russell says that “luminon” will show weakly in the red or orange and strongly in the blue and ultra-violet, and ends his letter by telling Mr. Ford: “If I were not engaged in a work of more immediate need for civilization than this I personally would search for ‘luminon’.”