[ Read before the Texas Academy of Science , December 28, 1898 .] 
SOME NEW MEASUREMENTS OF ELECTRIC WAVES. 
■ By R. S. Hyek, A. M. 
REGENT, SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, GEORGETOWN, TEXAS. 
Lord Kelvin’s preface to the English edition of Hertz’s work on Electric 
Waves concludes with this sentence: “During the fifty-six yeans which 
have passed since Faraday first offended physical mathematicians with 
his curved lines of force, many workers and many thinkers have helped to 
build up the nineteenth century school of 'plenum , one ether for light, 
heat, electricity, magnetism; and the German and English volumes con- 
taining Hertz’s electrical papers, given to the world in the last decade of 
the century, will be a permanent monument of the splendid consumma- 
tion now realized.” In similar terms of highest appreciation other noted 
physicists have spoken of Hertz’s work as furnishing complete experi- 
mental proof of the Faraday-Maxwell theory that electric discharges may 
generate electro-magnetic disturbances in the luminiferous ether which 
are propagated with the velocity of light. His experiments do unques- 
tionably prove that certain electric discharges are sources of electro- 
magnetic radiations that travel with a finite velocity, pass readily through 
non-conductors, and are reflected by conductors. The interest naturally 
to he attached to these results by reason of the fact that Maxwell’s theory 
predicted them was greatly enhanced by the proof which he subsequently 
offered in favor of the view that these disturbances are propagated with 
the velocity of light. 
Some years since, while attempting to repeat the very beautiful experi- 
ments by which he obtained, data for the calculation of this velocity, I 
was surprised to discover that his experiments might lead to results dif- 
fering greatly from those he had obtained. 
To present the subject with some degree of clearness to those' not fa- 
miliar with his work, a brief description of his methods is necessary. The 
exciting agent, which he called a vibrator or oscillator, consisted of two 
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