680 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
Suggestions towards a Theory of Electricity based on 
the Bubble Atom. By John Fraser, late Ordnance 
Survey, Edinburgh. Communicated by Dr W. Peddie. 
(MS. received December 12, 1904. Read May 15, 1905.) 
In a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on 
6th January 1902, and printed in its “ Proceedings,” I attempted 
to explain the constitution of matter by supposing the atoms of 
matter to be bubbles of ether. 
In order to fully understand what follows it is absolutely 
necessary to read that paper in its entirety, but for the benefit of 
those who may not have access to it, or who do not care to enter 
deeply into the subject, I give a short synopsis of it. 
1. Well, then, the ether is supposed to consist of almost infinitesi- 
mally small, perfectly globular, smooth, hard and elastic particles 
of equal mass, filling the whole of space, and penetrating the pores 
of all bodies. It is endowed, according to Herschel, with a pressure 
of seventeen billion pounds to the square inch, and which pressure 
is suggested by me to be an effect of the radiations of the infinity 
of stars ; the waste heat of the universe, in fact. The ponderable 
atoms of matter are supposed to be, simply, bubbles of ether, the 
walls of which are only the thickness of one ethereal particle ; and 
inside of which there is perfect emptiness — an absolute vacuum in 
fact. The bubbles are kept' from collapse by supposing the 
particles * in the skin, or walls, to be in very rapid revolution 
round the vacuum, and so preventing the entrance of the in- 
crushing ether by “ centrifugal force.” The bubbles, or atoms, of 
different substances have different quantities of ether composing 
their skins or walls, and so accounting for the different atomic 
weights of different substances, blot only so, but the particles in 
the atoms of different substances have different velocities accord- 
ingly as they (the atoms) are large or small, and their walls dense 
or rare, or close or open-grained. 
Two of these bubbles would stick together by what may be 
called ethereal suction when brought so close together as to touch, 
* Particle = unit of ether. Atom or bubble = ordinary atom of matter. 
