Word: etherization
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...Ether. The ether had another valuable property: it was at rest-"the calm ether-sea"-while everything else in the universe was in motion. Thus it provided the only stable "frame of reference." The earth, for instance, was thought to have "absolute motion" through the motionless ether...
...came that dreadful day when the ether was done to death. Two U.S. physicists, Albert A. Michelson and E. W. Morley, measured the speed of light simultaneously in two directions at right angles to one another. The speeds were expected to differ slightly because of "ether drift" past the earth. They turned out to be exactly the same, proving conclusively that ether did not exist...
Loss of the ether left the physicists inconsolable. Without it, light waves had no medium to carry them. The vital "frame of reference" was gone. No motion was "absolute" now. The motion of every moving body could be measured only "relative" to some other moving body...
...nearly 20 years, the physicists worked hard to "save" the ether. But the ether could not be saved, and with it went the authority of Newton's scientific decalogue, which depended upon it. Science, the guiding mind of technological civilization, was in crisis...
Photons and Quanta. In that same year, 1905, Einstein advanced another theory which many historians of science consider even more important than Relativity. The ether was gone, and although Relativity established the velocity of light as the firmest figure in the universe, it did not supply any medium to carry the waves of light...