Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/618

614 of inductive reasoning the law marks an important stage in the progress of science, and in its simple, generalized form is found to be identical with our present wider knowledge, so long as we avoid such phenomena as the skin effect, the Hall effect and conduction through gases.

Ohm's law thus experimentally discovered has stood the most exacting tests that modern methods have made possible. It has served as a firm basis for the progress of electrical science and marks the transition from the somewhat haphazard disconnected researches of those who preceded, to the well-directed, consistently developed labors of those who followed him. In a less degree and in a more limited field Ohm did for a branch of electrical science what at an earlier date Newton did for the great field of mechanics.