Abstract
I DOUBT very much whether Sir James Henderson1 is justified in assuming that the members of the International Committee—and presumably also those of the various congresses and committees which have from time to time reaffirmed the decision that the permeability of space should be regarded as an entity having physical dimensions (the so-called Oslo convention)—were not as fully aware as he himself of ” the implications of the adoption of Ampère's theory of magnetism”. That their interpretation of these implications differs from his I do not doubt. When I read that ” Prof. Howe would have us jettisonthat wonderful machine which has produced the electromagnetic theory of light, to which is due the discovery of the quantum theory and all the other developments of modern theoretical physics”, I can only smile and say that it sounds magnificently foolish, but bears little, if any, relation to the facts of the case. In his paper he showed that it was not only possible, but also very tempting, to assume that permeability is merely a numeric, and that in space the magnetic induction B and the magnetizing force H are one and the same thing. This is, however, a very old assumption; Gauss and Weber made it and on it built the electromagnetic system of units, but they never deceived themselves into thinking that it was anything more than a conventional assumption. Sir James is mistaken in thinking that I object to the mathematical nature of his arguments; on the contrary, my objection is to the assumptions which he introduces. The question is: What are the dimensional relations between H and B in space? I confess in all humility that I do not know, and I put B/H = ;0 a constant of space analogous to the gravitational or dielectric constants of space. Sir James Henderson, however, says, ” According to Ampère's theory B and H are physically identical” and apparently expects the scientific world, which has debated the matter for at least sixty years, to take his word for it.
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NATURE, 139, 676 (April 17, 1937).
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HOWE, G. Magnetic and Electrical Dimensions. Nature 139, 844 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139844a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139844a0
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