Sec. 4. ELECTRICAL OSCILLATIONS
The experiments of Hertz are well known. We know how the Bonn
physicist developed, by means of oscillating electric discharges,
displacement currents and induction effects in the whole of the space
round the spark-gap; and how he excited by induction at some point in
a wire a perturbation which afterwards is propagated along the wire,
and how a resonator enabled him to detect the effect produced.
The most important point made evident by the observation of
interference phenomena and subsequently verified directly by M.
Blondlot, is that the electromagnetic perturbation is propagated with
the speed of light, and this result condemns for ever all the
hypotheses which fail to attribute any part to the intervening media
in the propagation of an induction phenomenon.
If the inducing action were, in fact, to operate directly between the
inducing and the induced circuits, the propagation should be
instantaneous; for if an interval were to occur between the moment
when the cause acted and the one when the effect was produced, during
this interval there would no longer be anything anywhere, since the
intervening medium does not come into play, and the phenomenon would
then disappear.
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