transmission media and laid the foundation for the broadcasting industry.
Napoleon Hill, in discussing Marconi’s work here and in explaining certain other concepts later, uses the term ether rather than electromagnetic spectrum in both the original and
several subsequent edition of Think and Grow Rich! In so doing, he was simply reflecting the popular scientific concepts and, thus, the scientific vocabulary of the day. In the latter 19th and early 20th century, many scientists believed that an invisible substance, which they called ether permeated the universe, including empty space.
Through
this medium, light and other radiation were thought to travel like vibrations in a bowl of jelly. The Michelson-Morley experiments and Albert Einstein’s work, which resulted in the Special Theory of
Relativity, forced the scientific community to abandon the concept of ether.
Over the years, the universe with its incredible array of electromagnetic, nuclear, and gravitational forces and phenomena has turned out to be even more mysterious than Hill or any turn-of-the- century scientist suspected. Hill’s effort to describe, in
clear and understandable terms, energy phenomena—everything from broadcast waves to brainwaves gives the terminology in the original version of
Think and Grow Rich! a more metaphysical and metaphorical “flavor”
than it likely would have were he writing today. The few changes in terminology that have been made in this revised edition of
Think andGrow Rich!—as, for example, the use of electromagnetic spectrum”
instead of “ether”—are made simply to remove stylistic
“impediments” to understanding for today’s reader. The sum and substance of Hill’s ideas remain unchanged.
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