But that is because we have not admitted the full consequences of transferring our standpoint to the sun. We have all the while been keeping one foot on earth. Of course, the whole experiment turns on the two arms having been first adjusted to perfect equality. This could only be ascertained by experiment; and the test applied was to rotate the apparatus through a right angle, so that if, for example, the journey in the line of the earth's motion had had the advantage of the shorter arm on one occasion, the transverse journey would have had it on the repetition. That is a perfectly satisfactory test for a terrestrial observer; to turn a rod from one direction to another is the simple and direct way of marking out equal lengths. But the test is not satisfactory to an observer on the sun; he would not think of attempting to partition equal lengths of space by means of rods travelling at 20 miles a second. His frame of space--the space not only of refined measurement, but also of the cruder measurements made with the sense-organs of his body which determine his perception of space--is partitioned by appliances at rest relatively to him, e.g. his own eyes and limbs. Lengths of objects carried on the earth must be judged by him according to the room they occupy in his own frame. In the space of the terrestrial observer the two arms of the apparatus were adjusted to equal length; but in the re-partitioned space of the solar observer they may quite well occupy unequal lengths, and when we take the view-point of an observer on the sun we must not overlook this inequality. This inequality is not so much an hypothesis proposed to account for Michelson's result as a direct deduction from it. The two light-journeys were found to occupy equal times; this clearly shows that the arm in the less favoured direction is shorter than the other so as to counterbalance the handicap to which I have referred.[1] When the apparatus is turned through a right angle, the experiment still gives the same result. It does not matter which of the two arms we place in the line of the earth's motion; that arm must be shorter than the other. In other words each arm must automatically contract when it is turned from the transverse to the longitudinal position with respect to its line of motion. This is the famous FitzGerald contraction of a moving rod. It is of the same amount whatever the material of the rod, and depends only on the speed of its motion. For the earth's orbital motion the contraction amounts to one part in 200 million; in fact the earth's diameter in the direction of its motion is always shortened by 2½ inches, the transverse diameter being unaffected.