... indicative of the direction of the stresses in the ether. This suggestion did not meet the approval of the mathematical physicists of his day, for it necessitated 22 the abandonment of the conceptions ... a plane at right angles to the THE MACHINERY OF THE UNIVERSE MECHANICAL CONCEPTIONS OF PHYSICAL PHENOMENA BY A. E. DOLBEAR, A.B., A.M., M.E., Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY, TUFTS ... distinguish the atom from the ether into which it dissolved. In other words, such a conception makes the atoms of matter a form of motion of the ether, and not a created something put into the ether....