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jj thomson
audio
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Recording of J.J.
Thomson recorded on October 18,1934
following his discovery of the
electron.
 Download audio .mov file
and play in Quicktime
"Consider the discovery of the electron.
Could anything at first sight seem more
impractical than a body which could only
exist in vessels from which all but a
minute fraction of the air had been
extracted - which is so small that its
mass is an insignificant fraction of the
mass of an atom of hydrogen - which itself
is so small that a cloud of these atoms
equal in number to the population of the
whole world would be too small to have
been detected by any means then known to
science ? Now the electron has come into
commerce and large workshops and many
thousands of workers are employed in its
production. It has hardly an exaggeration,
I think, to say that any new scientific
discovery contains the germ of a new
industry. But I think these instances,
which I have given, show that scientific
discoveries are very efficient means of
creating employment. And instead of
attempting to reduce unemployment by
reducing research, at some level
suggested, I think the best hope for a
durable cure is to . . . go in for more
and more research. In my opinion, it is in
laboratories more often than houses of
parliament that a cure will be found."
J.J. Thomson
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Quicktime
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