After his efforts to expand the analytical range of a spectrometer were not successful, Ray Hodges discovered the bright side of sharing a negative outcome. After a postdoctoral position in the UK, my next appointment in the early 1970s was in private industry, in an organisation where the analytical chemistry section had already developed an international reputation for advances in modern instrumentation. One of my initial tasks was to expand the range of a spark/arc vacuum emission spectrometer to cover the strong visible emission lines of the alkali elements, enabling more comprehensive analysis. The spectrometer was for simultaneous multi-element analysis but it had been selected for steel analysis and was limited to spectral lines below 420 nm.
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