Notwithstanding, therefore, the efforts of a
great number of seekers, no general idea disengaged itself out of a
mass of often contradictory information.
Many physicists, in France particularly, discarded the study of
questions which seemed so confused, and it must even be frankly
acknowledged that some among them had a really unfounded distrust of
certain results which should have been considered proved, but which
had the misfortune to be in contradiction with the theories in current
use. All the classic ideas relating to electrical phenomena led to the
consideration that there existed a perfect symmetry between the two
electricities, positive and negative. In the passing of electricity
through gases there is manifested, on the contrary, an evident
dissymmetry. The anode and the cathode are immediately distinguished
in a tube of rarefied gas by their peculiar appearance; and the
conductivity does not appear, under certain conditions, to be the same
for the two modes of electrification.
It is not devoid of interest to note that Erman, a German scholar,
once very celebrated and now generally forgotten, drew attention as
early as 1815 to the unipolar conductivity of a flame.
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