,
,
, when brought in succession before the same Faraday cylinder
(see [Fig. 35]) and illuminated with a given frequency, were strictly identical. The significance of these results for the theory of quanta lay in the fact that I deduced from them the conclusion that in the photo-electric effect, contrary to preceding views including my own, the energy “
” is transferred without loss from the ether-waves to the free, i.e., the conduction electrons of the metal, and not merely to those bound in atoms. This seemed to take the absorbing mechanism out of the atom entirely, and to make the property of imparting the energy