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The toothed
wheel is here replaced, however, by a grating, in which the lines and
the spaces between them take the place of the teeth and the gaps, the
reflected light only being returned when it strikes on the space
between two lines. The illustrious American physicist estimates that
he can thus evaluate to nearly five kilometres the path traversed by
light in one second. This approximation corresponds to a relative
value of a few hundred-thousandths, and it far exceeds those hitherto
attained by the best experimenters. When all the experiments are
completed, they will perhaps solve certain questions still in
suspense; for instance, the question whether the speed of propagation
depends on intensity. If this turns out to be the case, we should be
brought to the important conclusion that the amplitude of the
oscillations, which is certainly very small in relation to the already
tiny wave-lengths, cannot be considered as unimportant in regard to
these lengths. Such would seem to have been the result of the curious
experiments of M.


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