discloses to us, or whether
there enters into play another medium of a gaseous nature, comprising
atoms, or molecules, immersed in a fluid pervading the space. Such a
medium surely must exist, and I am convinced that, for instance, even
if air were absent, the surface and neighborhood of a body in space
would be heated by rapidly alternating the potential of the body; but
no such heating of the surface or neighborhood could occur if all free
atoms were removed and only a homogeneous, incompressible, and elastic
fluid--such as ether is supposed to be--would remain, for then there
would be no impacts, no collisions. In such a case, as far as the body
itself is concerned, only frictional losses in the inside could occur.

It is a striking fact that the discharge through a gas is established
with ever increasing freedom as the frequency of the impulses is
augmented. It behaves in this respect quite contrarily to a metallic
conductor. In the latter the impedance enters prominently into play as
the frequency is increased, but the gas acts much as a series of
condensers would: the facility with which the discharge passes through
seems to depend on the rate of change of potential. If it act so, then
in a vacuum tube even of great length, and no matter how strong the
current, self-induction could not assert itself to any appreciable
degree. We have, then, as far as we can now see, in the gas a
conductor which is capable of transmitting electric impulses of any
frequency which we may be able to produce. Could the frequency be
brought high enough, then a queer system of electric distribution,
which would be likely to interest gas companies, might be realized:
metal pipes filled with gas--the metal being the insulator, the gas
the conductor--supplying phosphorescent bulbs, or perhaps devices as
yet uninvented. It is certainly possible to take a hollow core of
copper, rarefy the gas in the same, and by passing impulses of
sufficiently high frequency through a circuit around it, bring the gas
inside to a high degree of incandescence; but as to the nature of the
forces there would be considerable uncertainty, for it would be
doubtful whether with such impulses the copper core would act as a
static screen. Such paradoxes and apparent impossibilities we
encounter at every step in this line of work, and therein lies, to a
great extent, the claim of the study.

I have here a short and wide tube which is exhausted to a high degree
and c