ELECTRIC OSCILLATIONS AND ELECTRIC WAVES. 251 



Let A and B t Fig. 183, be two metal plates, and let the 

 dotted lines represent closed chains of geared ether cells, each 

 chain being like Fig. 181. Imagine the two plates A and B to 

 be connected by a wire, and an electric current to be forced 

 through this wire by means of a battery, thus causing the plates 

 A and B to become charged. The forcing of the current through 



Fig. 183. 



the wire means a forced slipping of ether cells at every point of 

 the wire, and each chain of geared cells, initially like Fig. 181, 

 would become distorted like Fig. 182. Throughout the region 

 between A and B the positive ether cells would be displaced 

 downwards and the negative ether cells would be displaced up- 

 wards, that is, the region between A and B woulcTBecome an 

 electric field, the direction of which would be outwards from the 

 positively charged plate A and inwards towards the negatively 

 charged plate B. 



Imagine the two metal plates A and B, Fig. 183, to be 

 charged, that is, imagine the chains of geared ether cells which 

 are represented by the dotted lines in Fig. 183 to be distorted 

 like Fig. 182. Then a wire * connected from A to B will cut 



* Strictly this wire should be thought of as a broad sheet of metal of which the 

 sectional view is shown in Fig. 183. See footnote on page 246. 



