Printed proof, 'Experiments on a fundamental question in electro-optics: Reduction of relative retardations to absolute' by John Kerr

Description

Kerr writes: 'To prepare the way, I begin by recalling these well-known facts: that when light passes through an electrostatically strained medium in a direction perpendicular to the line of electric force, it undergoes a uni-axal double refraction, the optic axis coinciding with the line of force; that with reference to this action, dielectrics are divisible into two classes, the positive and the negative, which are optically related to each other in the same way as the positive class of crystals to the negative; that the intensity of the action, or the quantity of optical effect per unit thickness of the dielectric, is measured by the product CF2, where C is a constant which is characteristic of the medium, and P is the value of the resultant electric force: that the effects are generally observed and examined still as they were discovered first, by simple experiments with a pair of Nicol’s prisms and a slip of strained glass or other phase-difference compensator.'

Annotations in pencil and ink.

Subject: Optics

Received 9 March 1894. Read 15 March 1894.

A version of this paper was published in volume 55 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society as 'Experiments on a fundamental question in electro-optics: Reduction of relative retardations to absolute'.

Reference number

PP/23/17

Earliest possible date

1894

Physical description

Ink and graphite pencil on paper

Page extent

12 pages

Format

Printed