Note 50 — Book VI (continued 3)

Just here we may refer to the fact—for it is a fact—that the electrical energy transmitted over a line, which may be many miles in length, really does not travel by the wire connecting the two points. It travels in the ether surrounding the wire. The wire itself is, in fact, the guiding core of the disturbances in the ether which proceed outward in all directions to unlimited distances. The guiding core or conducting wire is needed to focalize or direct the delivery of the energy. This curious conclusion of science, then, that the power from the power-station wire travels in the space around the wires led from the station, is one of the results of recent electrical studies, just as with light those studies begun by Maxwell and Hertz have led to the inevitable conclusion that the light of the candle, the light of a kerosene lamp, and the light of a gas burner are all in essence electrical phenomena, as are all forms of radiation in the ether (“Electricity During the Nineteenth Century,” Prof. Elihu Thomson, Washington, 1901).