handofg0d Posted:

When a body is heated, it emits radiant heat, a form of electromagnetic radiation in the infrared region of the EM spectrum. All of this was well understood at the time, and of considerable practical importance. When the body becomes red-hot, the red wavelength parts start to become visible. This had been studied over the previous years, as the instruments were being developed. However, most of the heat radiation remains infrared, until the body becomes as hot as the surface of the Sun (about 6000 K or 5726 °C, where most of the light is white in color). This was not achievable in the laboratory at that time. What is more, measuring specific infrared wavelengths was only then becoming feasible, due to newly developed experimental techniques. Until then, most of the electromagnetic spectrum was not measurable, and therefore blackbody emission had not been mapped out in detail.