Abstract :
C. O. Mailloux: This is another of the papers of the kind which, like one by Mr. Fortescue2 published some years ago and one by Mr. Rice3, written more recently, serves to advance our knowledge of ways and means of attacking problems that have baffled all others before these authors, and at the same time gives us very interesting evidence of the fact that the methods of mathematical treatment of previous generations say of the days of Maxwell, Kelvin, Mascart, Helmholtz, etc. are still capable of giving magnificent results. Mr. Fortescue, in an epoch-making paper, showed the valuable use that can be made of the principles of the potential energy function and of their application to the discussion of equipo ten tial surfaces, etc., as a means of mapping out the field of electric force around insulators that are subjected to high electrostatic stresses. Those who may have had doubts at that time in regard to the utility of the study of the potential function as a preparation for the analysis of phenomena in fields of force, and were disposed to look more sympathetically upon the more “modern” methods devised or elaborated by Bjerknes, Lorenz, and others, found that their fears in regard to the “staleness” of the older methods were not wholly well founded. What Mr. Fortescue did was, in a sense, an extension of Maxwell´s work, and his diagrams of lines of electric force in electrostatic fields show at least a family resemblance to some given in Maxwell´s treatise. Mr. Rice´s able paper furnished further valuable evidence of the great usefulness of this method of attack on seemingly difficult problems of like character.
