Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/430

 and Becquerel succeeded in deviating them by an electrostatic field. The deviable or β-rays were thus clearly of the same nature as cathode rays; and when measurements of the electric and magnetic deviations gave for the ratio m/e a value of the order 10-7, the identity of the β-particles with the cathode-ray corpuscles was fully established.

The subsequent history of the new branch of physics thus created falls outside the limits of the present work. We must now consider the progress which was achieved in the general theory of aether and electricity in the last decade of the nineteenth century.