James Walker, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 21… (1911)
“ POLARIZATION OF LIGHT. A stream of light coming directly from a natural source has no relation to space except that concerned in its direction of propagation, round which its properties are alike on all sides. ”
James Walker, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 21… (1911)
“ The lateral characteristics of a polarized stream lead at once to the conclusion that the stream may be represented by a vector, and since this vector must indicate the direction in which the light travels as well as the plane of polarization, it is natural to infer that it is transverse to the direction of propagation. That this is actually the case is proved by experiments on the interference of polarized light, from which it may be deduced that the polarization-vector of a train of plane waves of plane polarized light executes rectilinear vibrations in the plane of the waves. ”
James Walker, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 21… (1911)
“ The path of the extremity of the vector is then in general an ellipse, traversed in a right-handed direction to an observer receiving the light when α−β is between 0 and π, or between −π and −2π, and in a left-handed direction if this angle be between π and 2π, or between 0 and −π. In conformity with the form of the path, the light is said to be elliptically polarized, right- or left-handedly as the case may be, and the axes of the elliptic path are determined by the planes of maximum and minimum polarization of the light. ”
