Finally he hit
upon the apparatus for his initial experiments which I have already
described.
"Recurring to what had been done more than half a century ago by
Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means
of a concave mirror," said Hall, "I saw that the key I wanted lay in
an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could
transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether,
which, when they had been concentrated upon a metallic object, like a
chunk of gold, imparted to it an intense charge of an apparently
electric nature. Upon thus charging a metallic body enclosed in a
vacuum, I observed that the energy imparted to it possessed the
remarkable power of disrupting its atoms and projecting them off in
straight lines, very much as occurs with a kathode in a Crookes's
tube. But--and this was of supreme importance--I found that the line
of projection was directly towards the apparatus from which the
impulse producing the charge had come. In other words, I could produce
two poles between which a marvellous interaction occurred.
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