134 Master Minds of Modern Science 



Newton said it was impossible to conceive of direct action 

 at a distance, yet light and radiant heat reach us from 

 the sun more than ninety million miles away, while wire- 

 less electric waves travel at the same speed as light, and 

 there is no appreciable interval between the striking of a 

 note on a piano in London and its reception by a listener 

 at Edinburgh or Plymouth. 



In his book The Ether of Space (published by Benn) 

 Sir Oliver Lodge says : 



No form of ordinary matter, solid, liquid, or gaseous, is 

 competent to transmit a thing with the speed of light. For 

 the conveyance of radiation or light all ordinary matter is not 

 only incompetent, but hopelessly and absurdly incompetent. 

 Yet it is transmitted — for it takes time on the journey, travelling 

 at a well-known and definite speed, and it is a quivering or 

 periodic disturbance falling under the general category of 

 wave motion. 



Gravity too depends upon the existence of some such 

 medium as ether. The power of gravity is enormous, and 

 of it Sir Oliver says : " The force with which the moon is 

 held in its orbit would be great enough to tear asunder a 

 steel rod four hundred miles thick with a tenacity of 

 thirty tons per square inch." 



Sir Oliver continues : 



The question is often asked, " Is ether material ? " . . . Un- 

 doubtedly the ether belongs to the material or physical universe, 

 but it is not ordinary matter. I should prefer to say that it is 

 not ' matter ' at all. It may be the substance or substratum 

 or material of which matter is composed, but it would be con- 

 fusing and inconvenient not to be able to discriminate between 

 matter on the one hand and ether on the other. . . . 



The essential distinction between matter and ether is that 

 matter moves in the sense that it has the property of locomotion 

 and can effect impact and bombardment ; while ether is 

 strained and has the property of exerting stress and recoil. All 



