Page:The wonders of optics (1869).djvu/85

 phers who endeavoured to determine the velocity of light by experiment. In the first of his dialogues, Delle Scienze Nuove, he announces by the mouth of Salviati, one of the speakers present, the ingenious means he had employed, and which he thought quite sufficient to solve the question. Two observers with lights were placed at the distance of one mile from each other; one of them extinguished his light, and the other as soon as he perceived it extinguished his. But as the first observer saw the second light disappear the instant he had extinguished his own, Galileo concluded that light was propagated instantaneously through a distance double that which separated the two observers. Certain analogous experiments that were made by the members of the Academy Del Cimento, but at three times the distance, led to precisely the same conclusions.

These attempted proofs seem at first sight to be absurd, when we think of the vastness of the problem to be solved; but we must judge these experiments with less severity, when we consider that almost at the same epoch, men of such well-deserved repute as Lord Bacon believed that the velocity of light, like that of sound, was sensibly altered by the force and direction of the wind.

Descartes, whose theories upon light had so much analogy with those known under the name of the undulatory hypothesis, believed that light was transmitted instantaneously throughout any distance, and endeavours to prove his position by proofs that he thought he had obtained whilst observing an eclipse of the moon. It must be acknowledged, however, that his very ingenious train of reasoning proves that whether the transmission of light is instantaneous or not, it is at least too considerable to be determined by experiments made on the earth, like those of Galileo, and which he vainly hoped would have solved the question.