On Radiant Matter — Sir William Crookes (1879)

On Radiant Matter is Sir William Crookes’s celebrated 1879 lecture on electrical discharge through highly rarefied gases and the strange luminous phenomena he described as a new, radiant state of matter.

Physical edition: The Holographic Pagan Press edition is a handmade softcover book, not a hardcover.

Delivered before the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Sheffield on August 22, 1879, the lecture presents Crookes’s experiments with evacuated glass tubes, cathode rays, molecular bombardment, phosphorescence, and the behavior of matter under extreme rarefaction. The demonstrations helped shape the scientific imagination that would eventually lead toward electron physics, plasma research, and modern vacuum-tube technology.

For readers of occult and psychical history, the work is equally fascinating because Crookes later became one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent scientific investigators of mediumship and psychic phenomena. On Radiant Matter captures the experimental side of a figure who stood at the intersection of Victorian physics, invention, spectroscopy, and psychical research.

This text has been prepared by Odd Enough Books / Holographic Pagan Press as part of an ongoing effort to recover and circulate overlooked works from the history of scientific, metaphysical, and psychical inquiry.

This is a handmade 8.5" × 11" Holographic Pagan Press edition, produced with pale parchment cardstock, a charcoal tape-bound spine, and newly prepared cover artwork based on the Crookes tube and radiant-matter experiments.

Issued here as a first Holographic Pagan Press edition.

Details:
Author: Sir William Crookes
Title: On Radiant Matter
Lecture delivered: August 22, 1879
First separately issued: 1879, London
Original extent: approximately 30 pages plus folded plate
Format: Handmade 8.5" × 11" physical book / PDF edition
Binding: Charcoal tape-bound spine
Publisher: Odd Enough Books / Holographic Pagan Press
Edition: First Holographic Pagan Press Edition

Collector’s Note

This edition is part of the Holographic Pagan Press archival publishing project, devoted to recovering uncommon and historically important works from forgotten science, psychical research, occult history, metaphysics, experimental physics, and the borderlands of human inquiry.