Re: Paschen paper online

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br> 

Tesla list wrote:

 > Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

 > It is certainly NOT old German, or even middle German.  That would be like
 > Beowulf in the original language (Old English).  I have an old family bible
 > that is probably 100 years older, and even it isn't in old German, although
 > it IS printed in Fraktur (that old style script where "f"s and "s"s look
 > real similar).

Try this paper, that I am trying to read:
Annalen der Physik, 9, 2, 1801, p. 121. The following paper is about the
same subject (p. 158). Curious devices known as "doublers of
electricity".
They are available at http://gallica.bnf.fr.

 > Certainly, if you try to translate it with babelfish, or with your handy
 > Cassells compact or Langenscheidt's  German-English dictionary, you're going
 > to find a lot of missing words.  However, since we all know what Paschen is
 > talking about, one can usually figure stuff out from context. There ARE a
 > number of idomatic phrases that are probably "terms of art" for the 1880s,
 > and don' t translate exactly.

Some translate correctly if you split the composite words. For the "s"
that looks as "f", just replace by "s". The combination "fs" is the
"beta" of more recent German (what a weird change), and can be replaced
by "ss". Old English, French, and other languages, used the "f" too.

 > I've encountered similar problems trying to read French technical papers
 > from that era.  With the German, since I have some experience reading
 > technical German (both old and new), I can usually figure out what they were
 > talking about (sometimes, idiomatic technical phrases translate very
 > differently than they would in colloquial usage).  In French, I'm lost.

I can read well old French, I think. See the old books about electricity
at http://cnum.cnam.fr/

Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz