Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/371

 magnetism as the secondary effect, and to ascribe magnetic fields, not to the presence of magnetic tubes, but to the motion of electric tubes. In order to account for the fact that magnetic fields may occur without any manifestation of electric force, he assumed that tubes exist in great numbers everywhere in space, either in the form of closed circuits or else terminating on atoms, and that electric force is only perceived when the tubes have a greater tendency to lie in one direction than in another. In a steady magnetic field the positive and negative tubes might be conceived to be moving in opposite directions with equal velocities.

A beam of light might, from this point of view, be regarded simply as a group of tubes of force which are moving with the velocity of light at right angles to their own length. Such a conception almost amounts to a return to the corpuscular theory; but since the tubes have definite directions perpendicular to the direction of propagation, there would now be no difficulty in explaining polarization.

The energy accompanying all electric and magnetic phenomena was supposed by Thomson to be ultimately kinetic energy of the aether; the electric part of it being represented by rotation of the aether inside and about the tubes, and the magnetic part being the energy of the additional disturbance set up in the aether by the movement of the tubes. The inertia of this latter motion he regarded as the cause of induced electromotive force.

There was, however, one phenomenon of the electromagnetic field as yet unexplained in terms of these conceptions—namely, the ponderomotive force which is exerted by the field on a conductor carrying an electric current. Now any ponderomotive force consists in a transfer of mechanical momentum from the agent which exerts the force to the body which experiences it; and it occurred to Thomson that the ponderomotive forces of the electromagnetic field might be explained if the moving tubes of force, which enter a conductor carrying a clurent and are there dissolved, were supposed to possess