This
idea of the oscillating current was closely akin to that which was at
last to lead to an entirely satisfactory solution: that is, to a
solution which is founded on the properties of electric waves.
Sec. 5
Having thus got to the threshold of the definitive edifice, the
historian, who has conducted his readers over the two parallel routes
which have just been marked out, will be brought to ask himself
whether he has been a sufficiently faithful guide and has not omitted
to draw attention to all essential points in the regions passed
through.
Ought we not to place by the side, or perhaps in front, of the authors
who have devised the practical appliances, those scholars who have
constructed the theories and realised the laboratory experiments of
which, after all, the apparatus are only the immediate applications?
If we speak of the propagation of a current in a material medium, can
one forget the names of Fourier and of Ohm, who established by
theoretical considerations the laws which preside over this
propagation? When one looks at the phenomena of induction, would it
not be just to remember that Arago foresaw them, and that Michael
Faraday discovered them? It would be a delicate, and also a rather
puerile task, to class men of genius in order of merit.
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