Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/327

Rh surmounted. The turning-point between the old physics and the new physics was reached in 1837, when Faraday published his experiments on the specific inductive capacity of substances. This discovery was revolutionary in its character, but it made no great stir in science at the time. The world did not awake to its full significance until the perplexing problem of ocean-telegraphs converted it from a theoretical proposition into a practical reality, and forced it on the attention of electricians. The eminent scientific advisers of the cable companies were the first to do justice to Faraday. This is one of the many returns made to theoretical electricity for the support it gave to the most magnificent commercial enterprise.

The discovery of diamagnetism furnished another argument in favor of the new interpretation of physical action. What that new interpretation was, is well described by Maxwell: "Faraday, in his mind's eye, saw lines of force traversing all space, where the mathematicians saw centres of force attracting at a distance; Faraday saw a medium where they saw nothing but distance; Faraday sought the seat of the phenomena in real actions going on in the medium, they were satisfied that they had found it in a power of action at a distance impressed on the electric fluids." The physical statement waited only for the coming of the mathematicians who could translate it into the language of analysis, and prove that it had as precise a numerical consistency as the old view with all the facts of observation. A paper published by Sir William Thomson, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, pointed the way. Prof. Maxwell, in his masterly work on electricity and magnetism, which appeared in 1873, has built a monument to Faraday, and unconsciously to himself also, out of the strongest mathematics. For forty years mathematicians and physicists had labored to associate the laws of electro-statics and electro-dynamics under some more general expression. An early attempt was made by Gauss in 1835, but his process was published, for the first time, in the recent complete edition of his works. Maxwell objects to the formula of Gauss because it violates the law of the conservation of energy. Weber's method was made known in 1846; but it has not escaped the criticism of Helmholtz. It represents faithfully the laws of Ampère and the facts of induction, and led Weber to an absolute measurement of the electro-static and electro-magnetic units. The ratio of these units, according to the formulas, is a velocity; and experiment shows that this velocity is equal to the velocity of light. As Weber's theory starts with the conception of action at a distance, without any mediation, the effect would be instantaneous, and we are at a loss to discover the physical meaning which he attaches to his velocity. Gauss abandoned his researches in electromagnetism because he could not satisfy his mind in regard to the propagation of its influence in time. Other mathematicians have worked for a solution, but have lost themselves in a cloud of