Re: Paschen paper online

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

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


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: Paschen paper online


 > 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.

I was thinking more that you'll see technical usages like the term: "in the
frame of", which would be best translated to "in the context of".

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),

It's actually called (as pronounced in English) et set...  as you say,
equivalent to double s. Common in forms like Strasse, weiss, Mass, etc.  I
think it's a handwriting/typesetting thing.   (English has such ligatures
(digraphs) as well, ae (as in Encyclopaedia or paediatrics...) fallling out
of favor)  "W" (double u) coming from Welsh, etc.

  and can be replaced
 > by "ss". Old English, French, and other languages, used the "f" too.

The umlaut (two dots over the letter) is merely a shorthand form of the
vowel-e form (Ueber in the title of the Paschen paper), with the older form
becoming more common again, due to ASCII not having umlauts ( a not so
subtle form of U.S. hegemony..there aren't any other letters or diacritical
marks like cedilla, accents, circumflex, etc.)