Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/630

612 to this presently. The theories of light, however, involved matter and motion. The corpuscular theory, as you well know, supposed that excessively small particles were emitted from luminous bodies, and traveled with enormous velocity. The undulatory theory, which supplanted it, supposed that luminous bodies caused undulations or vibrations in a highly tenuous matter called ether, which is supposed to exist throughout the interplanetary spaces and throughout the universe so far as we know it. Some suppose this ether to be of a specific character, differing from that of ordinary gases, others that it is in the nature of a highly attenuated gas; but, whatever it be, it can not be affected by undulations or vibrations without being moved, and when matter is moved by any force it must offer resistance to that force, and hence we get antagonism between force and resistance. Light also takes time in overcoming this resistance, i. e., in pushing aside the ether. It travels no doubt at a good pace—about one hundred and ninety thousand miles in a second; but even at this rate, and without being particular as to a few millions of miles, it takes three years and a quarter to reach us from the star which, so far as we know, is the nearest to us, viz., α Centauri. The ether, or whatever it may be called, tenuous as it is, is not unimportant, though it be not heavy. Without it we should have no light and possibly no heat, and the consequences of its absence would be rather formidable. I believe you have heard Dr. Tyndall on this subject. Supposing the visible universe to be as it is now supposed to be, i. e., in no part a mere vacuum, there can be no force without resistance in any part of it.

But photography carries us further, it shows us that light acts on matter chemically, that it is capable of decomposing or forcing asunder the constituents of chemical compounds, and is therefore a force met by resistance. In the year 1856 I made some experiments, published in the "Philosophical Magazine" for January, 1857, which seemed to me to carry still further what I may call the molecular fight between light and chemical affinity, and among them the following: Letters cut out of paper are placed between two polished squares of glass with tin-foil on the outsides. It is then electrized like a Leyden jar, for a few seconds, the glasses separated, the letters blown off, and the inside of one of the glasses covered with photographic collodion. This is then exposed to diffuse daylight, and on being immersed in the nitrate of silver bath the part which had been covered with the paper comes out dark, the remainder of the plate being unaffected. (This result was shown by the electric-light lantern.) In this case we see that another imponderable force, electricity, invisibly affects the surface of glass in such a way that it conveys to another substance of definite thickness, viz., the prepared collodion, a change in the