Page:Michelson1897.djvu/2

 cemented to the ends of the iron pipes; mn, plane glass plates silvered on front surface, and provided with adjustments in two planes; omnb. the path of the pencil of light. The apparatus was set up in the vertical east and west plane, the light traversing the entire circuit of the Ryerson Laboratory, a path about 200 feet long and 50 feet high.



It was found that under ordinary conditions the temperature disturbances in this length of air made it impossible to measure the position of the fringes; and the difficulty was only slightly remedied by enclosing the whole path of the light in a wooden box. By making this enclosure an iron pipe and exhausting the air to within a hundredth of an atmosphere, it was found possible to measure the position of the central bright fringe to within something like a twentieth of the fringe-width.

A difficulty is encountered in the selection of a fiducial mark. The double image of the source does not remain on the cross hairs of the observing telescope for any great length of time, notwithstanding the precaution of the double reflections at the corners, but by using this double image itself as the fiducial mark, any possible errors due to daily temperature changes, etc., are eliminated. This double image and the interference fringes are not in focus at the same time, but by sacrificing a very