09/19/2023
“The fascination of the electro-magnetic theory of light, advanced by Maxwell and subsequently experimentally investigated by Hertz, was so great that even now, although controverted, the scientific minds are under its sway. This theory supposed the existence of a medium which was solid, yet permitted bodies to pass through it without resistance; tenuous beyond conception, and yet, according to some, one thousand times denser than platinum. According to our conceptions of mechanical principles and ages of experience, such a medium was absolutely impossible. Nevertheless, light was considered essentially a phenomenon bound up in that kind of a medium; namely, one capable of transmitting transverse vibrations like a solid.
“It is true that many scientific minds envisaged the theory of a gaseous ether, but it was rejected again and again because in such a medium longitudinal waves would be propagated with infinite velocity. Lord Kelvin conceived the so-called contractile ether, possessing properties which would result in a finite velocity of longitudinal waves. In 1885, however, an academic dissertation was published by Prof. De Volson Wood, an American, at a Hoboken institution, which dealt with a gaseous ether in which the elasticity, density and specific heat were determined with rare academic elegance. But, so far, everything pertaining to the subject was purely theoretical.”
“What, then, can light be if it is not a transverse vibration?
“I consider this extremely important. Light cannot be anything else but a longitudinal disturbance in the ether, involving alternate compressions and rarefactions. In other words, light can be nothing else than a sound wave in the ether.”
“This appears clearly if it is first realized that, there being no Maxwellian ether, there can be no transverse oscillation in the medium.”
The Newtonian theory is in error, because it fails entirely in not being able to explain how a small candle can project particles with the same speed as the blazing sun, which has an immensely higher temperature. We have made sure by experiment that light propagates with the same velocity irrespective of the character of the source. Such constancy of velocity can only be explained by assuming that it is dependent solely on the physical properties of the medium, especially density and elastic force.”
–Nikola Tesla
“Tesla Sees Evidence Radio and Light Are Sound.” New York Times, April 8, 1934.