The following article by A. Press (B.Sc., Chulalongkorn University), first published in the September 1916 issue of “The Electrical Experimenter” (and reprinted in the 2001 Annual JBR, “Ether, Electricity, and Its Manifestations”), is an examination of the theories of Maxwell and Lorentz in relation to etheric physics as they were understood in the early twentieth century.
The electrical theory of Maxwell was based on the assumption that when a body was electrified something in the nature of a displacement passed from the body into the ether, and from the ether to some other material object or objects said to be electrified.
That the displacement was not material, that is had no weight, went without saying, for with the most delicate chemical balance no difference in weight could be detected. lt, therefore, had to partake of an ether-like displacement because the ether has no weight.
Maxwell conceived the idea that is was this mysterious displacement, by an unrevealed physical mechanism, that caused electrified bodies to be attracted or repelled according to the well known material Newtonian laws of mechanics.
Whereas, the electrical displacement is intangible as it were, because it involves the ether only, forces always very visibly manifested at the material bounding surfaces of the ether were conceived to take place by virtue of a special displacement mechanism which Maxwell assumed. This displacement mechanism was considered to be located in the ether itself rather than in the electrified material bodies.
Forces there must be in the ether, but it is necessary to remember that we can make sure of their existence only by mechanical reactions of the ether upon material bodies. When the forces refer wholly to the ether they are designated as “generalized” forces. Thus, although an electromotive force is regarded as setting up a flux of electric displacement this force cannot be considered a true force in the Newtonian sense, for matter is not involved, except indirectly. The mechanical of Newtonian forces that are observable on electrical bodies always imply matter, Electrical instruments are employed to measure E.M.F.’s (potentials) and currents, but it is very obvious that what were really measuring are the reactions of the ether upon material bodies and not the forces that act wholly and entirely on the parts of the medium itself.
The question can arise whether electricity as such can exist apart from matter. Heaviside is decidedly of the opinion that is cannot. We know that like charges repel each other and therefore the functions of the material bounding surfaces of the ether appears to keep the like elemental charges together. Just how this property is maintained is at once one of the mysteries and distinguishable properties of matter.
In the newer theory of Lorentz, electrification of displacement is said to be due to electrons. In the first place it is difficult to see how any portion of electricity can manifest itself except by a material reaction which can be accounted for a Newtonian force being set up. Yet single negative electrons have been observed. Again is the electron or atom of electricity were of the imponderable ether substance then there is difficulty accounting for the elemental electrical charge keeping itself intact; for even an electron is supposed to have dimensions. It was from this that Heaviside foretold that the observable electron would be found to have a material nucleus. It would also seem to nullify the earlier electric particle hypothesis of Maxwell.
Strange to say in attempting to form a physical picture of electrical displacement. Maxwell himself imagined a sort of purely ether particle which bears a very close resemblance to Lorentz’s electron particle. However, such makeshift devises, for such they are, do not by any means explain how mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy of how electrical energy, such as the electromagnetic light from the Sun, can be transmitted through space to be thereafter transformed into work in the service of man, or how to interpret matter in the terms of ether.
Both Lorentz and Maxwell imagined their ultimate electrical particles to be of such a nature that, in what are called dielectrics or insulators, the electrons are capable of moving only a short distance from their normal state of equilibrium; whereas in conductors such as copper, the electrons were considered to be free and capable of being set in motion by appropriate ethereal or as we now express it- electromotive forces. Such forces, as has already been indicated above, are not, to be confounded with the mechanical forces such as pressure or inertia. Yet when a conductor passes through a state of the ether called a magnetic field, the electrons in the conductor are assumes to be impelled in a certain direction. So far as electrons are concerned, it is electromagnetic force that causes the electrons to travel through what are really the large-sized pores of the material; but so far as the copper or material conductor is concerned it is a Newtonian mechanical force or pull that will be found necessary to be applied to set up the electronic displacement.
In the dielectric or insulating medium of a condenser the electrons are considered tied, as it were, to the material atoms or molecules of the insulating medium. They are not supposed capable of extended migratory movement from the individual atom. Thus for an alternating E.M.F. large current volumes can be set up but cannot however, be maintained uni-directionally to any considerable extent. Of course, in conductors this limitation is not present and the electrons are free to travel in a complete physical circuit.
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