Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/283



But as I have already alluded to that particular part of our science progress in my earlier chapters, I am disposed to deal here rather with another section, which was even yet more marvellous and striking, namely the conjunction, or say rather the co-aligning of the cross-electric force progression. with the light-vibration, by which we attained that modern wonder of all wonders, the Cross-Electric Light-Speed, a speed which exceeded that of ordinary light in the proportion in which the space between the crests of the light waves exceeds that between the atoms or points of the ether medium. And again, enormous as this new speed was, we could further double it, when we afterwards understood how to transfer the electro-light line of progression to the wider-waved red and heat rays of the less refrangible end of the spectrum, from those of the violet and chemical, with which our great discovery had opened. In short, our electro-light line now, as it were, leapt the space between the light-vibrations in the same time as, while only simple light, it traversed that between the ether points.

Clearly enough then, this enormous accession to our capability of speed must supposably give us a grand power in many ways. We could, for example, overtake ordinary light in its journey into space at its heretofore all-surpassing speed of over one hundred and eighty thousand miles in a second. We could