Editing Henri Becquerel (section)

==== Experiments ====
[[File:Becquerel in the lab.jpg|thumb|upright|Becquerel in the lab]]

Describing them to the [[French Academy of Sciences]] on 27 February 1896, he said:

<blockquote>One wraps a [[Auguste and Louis Lumière|Lumière]] photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative&nbsp;... One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduce silver salts.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Henri Becquerel|title =Sur les radiations émises par phosphorescence|journal=Comptes Rendus |volume = 122| pages = 420–421|year=1896|url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k30780/f422.chemindefer}}</ref><ref>''Comptes Rendus'' '''122''': 420 (1896), [http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/becquerel.html translated by Carmen Giunta]. Accessed 02 March 2019.</ref></blockquote>

But further experiments led him to doubt and then abandon this hypothesis. On 2 March 1896 he reported:

<blockquote>I will insist particularly upon the following fact, which seems to me quite important and beyond the phenomena which one could expect to observe: The same crystalline crusts [of potassium uranyl sulfate], arranged the same way with respect to the photographic plates, in the same conditions and through the same screens, but sheltered from the excitation of incident rays and kept in darkness, still produce the same photographic images. Here is how I was led to make this observation: among the preceding experiments, some had been prepared on Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th of February, and since the sun was out only intermittently on these days, I kept the apparatuses prepared and returned the cases to the darkness of a bureau drawer, leaving in place the crusts of the uranium salt. Since the sun did not come out in the following days, I developed the photographic plates on the 1st of March, expecting to find the images very weak. Instead the silhouettes appeared with great intensity ... One hypothesis which presents itself to the mind naturally enough would be to suppose that these rays, whose effects have a great similarity to the effects produced by the rays studied by M. Lenard and M. Röntgen, are invisible rays emitted by phosphorescence and persisting infinitely longer than the duration of the luminous rays emitted by these bodies. However, the present experiments, without being contrary to this hypothesis, do not warrant this conclusion. I hope that the experiments which I am pursuing at the moment will be able to bring some clarification to this new class of phenomena.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Henri Becquerel|title =Sur les radiations invisibles émises par les corps phosphorescents|journal=Comptes Rendus |volume = 122| pages = 501–503|year=1896|url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k30780/f503.item}}</ref><ref>''Comptes Rendus'' '''122''': 501–503 (1896), [http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/becquerel.html translated by Carmen Giunta]. Accessed 02 March 2019.</ref></blockquote>