“What properties are essential to a medium capable of transmitting wave motion? Roughly, we may say two: elasticity and inertia.”

—  Oliver Lodge

The Ether of Space https://books.google.com/books?id=ycgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3, p. 3
The Ether of Space (1909)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What properties are essential to a medium capable of transmitting wave motion? Roughly, we may say two: elasticity and …" by Oliver Lodge?
Oliver Lodge photo
Oliver Lodge 19
British physicist 1851–1940

Related quotes

Albert A. Michelson photo

“Earthquakes generate elastic waves when one block of material slides against another; the break between the two blocks being called a fault.”

David Gubbins (1947) British university teacher

Explosions generate elastic waves by an impulsive change in volume in the material. Small explosive charges are used in controlled-source seismic experiments in which the waves penetrate only a few kilometres into the earth.
[Seismology and plate tectonics, 1990, http://books.google.com/books?id=tZRxPzwoChIC&pg=PA12] (p. 12)
Seismology and Plate Tectonics (1990)

William Kingdon Clifford photo
Edward Bernays photo

“The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news.”

Edward Bernays (1891–1995) American public relations consultant, marketing pioneer

Source: Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), p. 171

William Crookes photo

“A sensitive may be one who possesses the telepathic transmitting or receiving ganglion in an advanced state of development, or who, by constant practice, is rendered more sensitive to these high-frequency waves.”

William Crookes (1832–1919) British chemist and physicist

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: These rays, as generated in the vacuum tube, are not homogeneous, but consist of bundles of different wave-lengths, analogous to what would be differences of colour could we see them as light. Some pass easily through flesh, but are partially arrested by bone, while others pass with almost equal facility through bone and flesh.
It seems to me that in these rays we may have a possible mode of transmitting intelligence which, with a few reasonable postulates, may supply a key to much that is obscure in psychical research. Let it be assumed that these rays, or rays even of higher frequency, can pass into the brain and act on some nervous center there. Let it be conceived that the brain contains a center which uses these rays as the vocal chords use sound vibrations (both being under the command of intelligence), and sends them out, with the velocity of light, to impinge on the receiving ganglion of another brain. In this way some, at least, of the phenomena of telepathy, and the transmission of intelligence from one sensitive to another through long distances, seem to come into the domain of law and can be grasped. A sensitive may be one who possesses the telepathic transmitting or receiving ganglion in an advanced state of development, or who, by constant practice, is rendered more sensitive to these high-frequency waves. Experience seems to show that the receiving and the transmitting ganglions are not equally developed; one may be active, while the other, like the pineal eye in man, may be only vestigial. By such an hypothesis no physical laws are violated; neither is it necessary to invoke what is commonly called the supernatural.

Oliver Lodge photo

“A body can only act immediately on what it is in contact with; it must be by the action of contiguous particles—that is, practically, through a continuous medium, that force can be transmitted across space.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

The Ether of Space https://books.google.com/books?id=ycgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA26, p. 26
The Ether of Space (1909)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Positivism : knowledge is hard, real, and capable of being transmitted in a tangible form.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Source: Dealing with Complexity (1988), p. 247.

Related topics