THE fact that energy in the form of electromagnetic waves may be transmitted at high speed through space and guided by conducting wires is a fundamentally important matter in practically all electrical systems--in electrical railroads, electrical lighting and power, telephone, telegraph and even radio broadcasting. This paper undertakes to give a brief picture of the process of electromagnetic transmission, but avoids any mathematical or quantitative discussion of the subject.
In order to give the picture we have in mind, it will be necessary to spend a considerable part of the available time recalling to your minds those most amazing ideas as to the make-up of the physical world which the physicists have given us in the electron theory. It is on these ideas that I wish to superimpose some ideas as to the nature of electromagnetic transmission and the part played in it by guiding wires.
Let us first recall the following : (I) The world appears to be built of two types of minute elementary particles, which may be called negative and positive electrons. Each electron carries a quantity of negative or positive electricity of definite amount.
(2) Each atom of matter is made up of a combination of positive and negative electrons, having such relation to each other that each atom may be visualized as something very much like a minute solar system, the electrons being extremely minute as compared with the distances which separate them in this system.
(3) Physical bodies are made up of a group of these atoms. For example, a solid body, such as a length of copper wire, is a grouping of atoms held together presumably by the interaction between the outer electrons of each atom and thus forming a structure tending to resist deformation.
(4) Each normal atom contains an equal number of positive and negative electrons. For this reason, and because of the way * Presented at a meeting held Thursday, February 7, I924.