Proofed and corrected from the scanned original edition.
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This is a highly technical scientific writing from 1899.
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An excerpt from the beginning of:
Simplified Theory of Electrical and
Optical Phenomena in Moving Systems.
§ 1. In former investigations I have assumed that, in all electrical and optical phenomena, taking place in ponderable matter, we have to do with small charged particles or ions, having determinate positions of equilibrium in dielectrics, but free to move in conductors except in so far as there is a resistance, depending on their velocities. According to these views an electric current in a conductor is to be considered as a progressive motion of the ions, and a dielectric polarization in a non-conductor as a displacement of the ions from their positions of equilibrium. The ions were supposed to be perfectly permeable to the aether, so that they can move while the aether remains at rest. I applied to the aether the ordinary electromagnetic equations, and to the ions certain other equations which seemed to present themselves rather naturally. In this way I arrived at a system of formulae which were found sufficient to account for a number of phenomena.
In the course of the investigation some artifices served to shorten the mathematical treatment. I shall now show that the theory may be still further simplified if the fundamental equations are immediately transformed in an appropriate manner.
