Abstract
THERE has been considerable difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory conception of the means by which the transverse vibrations of light are produced in the ether. In the attempt to surmount this difficulty some have gone so far as to conjecture that this structure of the ether must resemble that of a solid; for it was imagined that nothing but such a structure could propagate transverse vibrations. Yet the supposition of the ether being anything like a solid appears to be in direct antagonism to the evidence of our senses; for we move about so freely in this “solid” as to be unconscious even of its existence.
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PRESTON, S. On a Mode of Explaining the Transverse Vibrations of Light . Nature 21, 256–259 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021256a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021256a0