Abstract
PART IV.—RADIATION. IX. SO far as we have been able to understand and explain electrical phenomena, it has been by assuming the existence of a medium endowed with certain mechanical or quasi-mechanical properties, such as mobility, incompressibility or infinite elasticity of volume, combined with a certain amount of plasticity or finite elasticity of shape. We also imagined the medium as composed of two opposite constituents, which we called positive and negative electricity respectively, and which were connected in such a way that whatever one did the other tended to do the precise opposite. Further, we were led to endow each of these constituents with a certain amount of inertia, and we recognized something of the nature of friction between each constituent and ordinary matter.
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References
See Maxwell's "Electrical Researches of Cavendish," p. 104; see also p. 417.
Trans. R. S. Edin., xxi. 60; see also article "Ether," in the "Encyc. Brit."
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LODGE, O. Modern Views of Electricity 1 . Nature 38, 389–393 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038389a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038389a0
