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Internet Archive: Whittaker's books

Visit: 2026-10-07, Investigator run (STEP I). Site: https://archive.org (advanced-search API and item metadata, read in Chrome). Queries: advancedsearch Whittaker AND (aether OR Eddington OR gravitation) (27 hits); metadata for e-t-whittaker-a-history-of-the-theories-of-aether-and-electricity-vol-2-london-n (files) and fromeuclidtoeddi0000sire_g9k0 (metadata).

History Vol. 2 (1953), The Modern Theories 1900-1926 (priority 1)

  • Item: https://archive.org/details/e-t-whittaker-a-history-of-the-theories-of-aether-and-electricity-vol-2-london-n . Same uploader and naming as the Vol. 1 copy in the project folder (README: archive.org/details/e-t-whittaker-...-vol-1-london-n). [web]
  • Files: original PDF "E T Whittaker - A history of the theories of aether and electricity Vol 2-London, New York, T. Nelson [1951-_53> (1953).pdf", 14,762,209 bytes, "Image Container PDF"; Tesseract OCR full text (_djvu.txt, 763 KB); a text-layer PDF (16.4 MB); 165 page images. [web]
  • I did not check the item's access flag. The listing shows the original PDF and the OCR text as ordinary files, and the companion Vol. 1 item was freely downloadable. So the README's note ("Internet Archive copies are lending-restricted") may hold only for the other Vol. 2 copies (historyoftheorie0000edmu, 1954; historyoftheorie0000edmu_p7x4; historyoftheorie0000sire), which are library scans and probably lending-only. See "Corrections" in sites.md.
  • Not downloaded: needs the owner's approval (PDF 14.8 MB, or the djvu.txt at 763 KB). Vol. 2 has the chapters on relativity, on gravitation and on the electron theory. It is the most direct way to read what Whittaker in 1953 said about gravity and the aether, the point the Q07 hypothesis turns on.

From Euclid to Eddington (1949)

  • fromeuclidtoeddi0000sire_g9k0 (scanned 2026-05) and fromeuclidtoeddi0000sire: metadata shows "access-restricted-item": "true", collections inlibrary and printdisabled, so it is lending only (borrowing needs an archive.org login, which the Investigator may not use). [web]

Other hits (not opened)

  • Several 1910 first-edition copies (dli.ernet, in.ernet.dli.2015.*, historyoftheorie00whitrich, ahistorytheorie00whitgoog). The project already has the 1910 edition.
  • "Energy From The Vacuum [1080p] - Complete Series" (eftv_hd): Bearden's video series, which matched "Whittaker". Related scalar-wave material; belongs with the Bearden project.
  • Eddington, Fundamental Theory (1953), which Whittaker edited after Eddington's death (McCrea obituary).