There is then a wonderful agreement of the two measurements, but without more explanation than I can give you now, you cannot perhaps understand the importance of this agreement between two seemingly unconnected magnitudes. At all events we now know, from the work of Professor Hertz in the last two years, that Maxwell's theory is correct, and that light is an electro-magnetic disturbance; and what is more, we know that electro-magnetic disturbances, incomparably slower than red-light or heat, are passing now through our bodies; that this now recognized kind of radiation may be reflected and refracted, and yet will pass through brick and stone walls and foggy atmospheres where light cannot pass, and that possibly all military and marine and lighthouse signalling may be conducted in the future through the agency of this new and wonderful kind of radiation, of which what we call light is merely one form. Why at this moment, for all I know, two citizens of Leeds may be signalling to each other in this way through half a mile of houses, including this hall in which we are present.[12] {118} I mention this, the greatest modern philosophical discovery, because the germ of it, which was published by Thomson in 1856, makes direct reference to the analogy between the behaviour of our spinning-tops and magnetic and electrical phenomena. It will be easier, however, for us to consider here a mechanical illustration of the rotation of the plane of polarized light by magnetism which Thomson elaborated in 1874. This phenomenon may, I think, be regarded as the most important of all Faraday's discoveries. It was of enormous scientific importance, because it was made in a direction where a new phenomenon was not even suspected. Of his discovery of induced currents of electricity, to which all electric-lighting companies and transmission of power companies of the present day owe their being, Faraday himself said that it was a natural consequence of the discoveries of an earlier experimenter, Oersted. But this magneto-optic discovery was quite unexpected. I will now describe the phenomenon.