Central claims: Hieronymus-TG

Only one document is in this project: US Patent 2,482,773 (Thomas G. Hieronymus, 1949). All claims below are the patentee's own assertions [read: pp.2-5]. The text is fully readable (no source gap). The patent publishes no measured data. The inventor's other writings are not in the folder.

1. Every known chemical element emits "radiations" at ordinary room temperature (40-90 F), with both electrical and optical characteristics, in the violet-to-ultraviolet zone [read: p.2].
2. These radiations travel along electrical conductors like current, respond to capacitance, inductance and resistance, and can also be refracted, focused and diffracted like light [read: p.2]. The patent adds a converse: "the flow of electrons along a conductor produces a radiation having characteristics of the radiation from each respective element" [read: p.3], stated without support and not used by the apparatus.
3. Passed through a prism, each element's radiation leaves at a characteristic angle that rises with atomic weight (hydrogen smallest, isotopes included), so a scale reading plus a chart identifies the element, and mixtures give a composite signature [read: pp.4-5]. A lens variant (Fig. 4; patent claims 10-12) has "a focal point for each known element" with the scale read along the axis [read: pp.4, 6]. Fig. 3 is drawn only to about atomic weight 120; higher values are extrapolated [read: page image p.1].
4. The quantity or intensity of an element can be measured with a variable resistance set to its maximum value that still keeps the detector reaction [read: p.5]; patent claim 6 words the end point differently, as the resistance at which the detector's frictional characteristics are "unaffected" [read: p.6].
5. The detection is made by a coated plate whose surface "drag" under the operator's fingers changes when the radiation reaches it, a mechanism the patentee says "is not known" [read: p.4].
6. Plants in a darkened basement room, wired to outdoor electrodes exposed to the light, were "relatively healthy" and green, while "the control plant" (singular, no apparatus) was "devoid of chlorophyl"; the patentee's own interpretation is that "the radiations of the elements from the light" were "apparently" conducted to the plants through the wires. No species, counts, duration or repeat are given [read: p.3].