Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/20

8 physicists had so long been trying to crack were solved. The nature of the attraction of gravitation, and of the ether which was supposed to pervade all space, was found out, as well as the constitution of matter, and the nature of cohesion and of the force which was known to the scientists of the nineteenth century as electricity.

The nature of these forces being known, numerous properties belonging to them that had been previously unknown were deduced, and found to be of considerable practical importance. The most wonderful of all was the discovery that the attraction of gravitation could be prevented from acting on a body by surrounding it with wires, through which peculiarly constituted currents of electricity were flowing, or, in other words, it was possible to take away a body's weight altogether. The result was that flying machines were made practicable, and these soon became almost the sole means of locomotion. Ordinary vehicles could also have their weights