Fradin had stopped speaking when the storm of abuse broke over him. He stood there on the platform, a little, white haired guy with a gentle face.
"If you numbskulls will only be quiet for a moment," he said, when the noise had subsided for an instant, "I will offer incontrovertible proof to support my statement that radio waves are transmitted through what I must, for lack of a better term to describe the undescribable, call the fourth dimension."
What I mean, the roof must have been nailed down tight, or the explosion that followed would certainly have lifted it off the building. You never did see so many excited scientists in one group. Normally a scientist is supposed to be cool, aloof, and impersonal. But this group was anything else! They went right straight up in the air. I couldn't tell whether they were angrier because he had called them a bunch of numbskulls or because he had said that radio waves were transmitted through the fourth dimension.
One of them leaped to his feet. Ramsen, I think his name was. He was a big shot in the field, almost as big as De Forest and Marconi.
"Fradin," he yelled, "that is the most preposterous statement I ever heard from the lips of any man in his right senses. It raises the immediate question of whether or not you are in your right senses."
There was a buzz of approval following his statement. Fradin waited for it to die down.
"Mr. Ramsen," he said, "you have chosen to challenge my theory. Perhaps you can tell me what medium does carry the electro-magnetic radiations that we call radio waves?"
"Certainly," Ramsen answered. "Any schoolboy knows that."
"We are not here concerned with the knowledge of schoolboys," Fradin gently replied. "Sound is carried in air and water and by many solid substances. But we know that radio waves do not travel in air, because they will pass through a perfect vacuum. In what medium do they travel, Mr. Ramsen?"