Right here was where I began to pay close attention. Something about Fradin's manner, his calmness, his certainty, gave me the impression that he knew pretty much what he was talking about.
"Radio waves, Mr. Fradin," Ramsen answered, in the manner of a scoutmaster revealing the facts of life to an errant Boy Scout, "travel in the ether."
He was right. I was not assigned to cover this meeting by chance but because I happen to have a pretty good groundwork in science. Radio waves, all scientists admit, are propagated through the ether.
"And what," Fradin countered, "is the ether?"
"Why—" Ramsen answered. "It's—" He started to flounder. A sudden silence fell in the room. Ramsen's face started to get red. "The ether," he finished, "is—why it's the ether, that's what it is."
"What you are refusing to admit," Fradin crowed, "is that 'ether' is a meaningless word invented by numbskulls such as are gathered here to describe something about which they know absolutely nothing. The ether is a word, nothing more. It does not exist. The Michelson-Morley experiments conclusively proved that, if it existed, its nature was such that it could not be detected by any physical experiment whatsoever. In other words, that it exists only as a handy tool by which scientists who ought to know better can conceal their own ignorance. Gentlemen," he said, turning from the red-faced Ramsen to the perturbed audience, "I can not only conclusively prove that radio waves are transmitted through the fourth dimension—but I can also prove that power, actual power, can also be transmitted through the same medium!"
He stopped suddenly, biting his lips as if he had said more than he had intended to. But I think only one man in the audience had caught the full implication of Fradin's words. The rest of them were too busy defending themselves against the accusation of being numbskulls to notice the one really important thing he had said.
How that audience did boil! And they boiled because every man jack of them, in his heart of hearts, knew that Fradin was right. I knew it the minute he said it. And they knew it too. When he said that "ether" was only a word used by fools to conceal their own ignorance, he had hit the nail exactly on the head.
For that is precisely what it is. Nobody has ever seen the ether, felt it, smelled it, heard it, touched it. Scientists of the past century, needing a mechanical device to account for the observed propagation of electro-magnetic radiations such as light and the then little known radio waves, had invented the ether to carry those radiations, invented it out of whole cloth. Fradin's hearers knew he was right. Taken individually, when they were calm, they would have admitted it. But they were in a group and he was calling them fools right out in public. Mass hysteria got them. They boiled over and very promptly demanded that he prove his statements.
He refused to do it. Absolutely refused.