Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/48

 experimenting with the Iceland crystal. He observed that the two rays which are obtained by the double refraction of a single ray afterwards behave in a way different from ordinary light which has not experienced double refraction, and in particular, if one of these rays is incident on a second crystal of Iceland spar, it gives rise in some circumstances to two, and in others to only one, refracted ray. The behaviour of the ray at this second refraction can be altered by simply rotating the second crystal about the direction of the ray as axis; the ray undergoing the ordinary or extraordinary refraction according as the principal section of the crystal is in a certain direction or in the direction at right angles to this.

The first stage in the explanation of Huygens' observation was reached by Newton, who in 1717 showed that a ray obtained by double refraction differs from a ray of ordinary light in the same way that a long rod whose cross-section is a rectangle differs from a long rod whose cross-section is a circle: in other words, the properties of a ray of ordinary light are the same with respect to all directions at right angles to its direction of propagation, whereas a ray obtained by double refraction must be supposed to have sides, or properties related to special directions at right angles to its own direction. The refraction of such a ray at the surface of a crystal depends on the relation of its sides to the principal plane of the crystal.

That a ray of light should possess such properties seemed to Newton an insuperable objection to the hypothesis which regarded waves of light as analogous to waves of sound. On this point he was in the right: his objections are perfectly valid against the wave-theory as it was understood by his contemporaries, although not against the theory which was put forward a century later by Young and Fresnel.