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There are two typical visualizations for one of the results of the Millikan oil-drop experiment to illustrate that only integer multiples of some elementary charge occur in nature.

The first one is as a histogram like this one (source):

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The second just a simple scatter plot like this (source):

enter image description here

I just skimmed over some of Millikan's original papers but didn't find any visualization like the above ones. So did Millikan actually use such kind of plots? In which paper did those typical textbook diagrams of the Millikan experiment appear for the first time?

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  • $\begingroup$ Please provide references to the figures that you posted. $\endgroup$
    – AChem
    Jun 8 at 15:05
  • $\begingroup$ @AChem: I added two sources (see edited question), but the two types of representations fare very common in textbooks discussing the Millikans experiment. $\endgroup$
    – Julia
    Jun 8 at 19:35

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