The Bakerian Lecture. Experiments on the discharge of electricity through gases. Sketch of a theory

Abstract

In the following pages I give an account of several new phenomena, some of which have a direct bearing on the theory of the discharge of electricity through gases. Although I hope that the experiments may be judged independently of any theory, their description may be rendered a little more clear and interesting if I begin with a short explanation of the theoretical views to which they seem to me to point. These theoretical conclusions will be looked at favourably, I think, by those who have been trained up with the ideas of Faraday and Maxwell; for they must have always considered it likely that the conduction of electricity through gases is more probably due to something resembling the electrolytic conduction in liquids than to the direct passage of electricity from one molecule to another. My experiments with mercury vapour argue very strongly in favour of this view.