2026-10-04 Internet Archive: Mendeleeff, "An Attempt towards a Chemical Conception of the Ether" (1904, tr. G. Kamensky)
Item: https://archive.org/details/cu31924012371096 (Cornell copy). OCR text saved: research/files/mendeleeff-1904-chemical-conception-ether_djvu.txt. Also listed: archive.org anattempttoward00mendgoog, HathiTrust, Google Books, Open Library.
Reached from Google: Mendeleeff "Attempt towards a Chemical Conception of the Ether" 1904 full text archive.org; identifier found through the archive.org advancedsearch API.
What Mendeleev wrote (OCR text) [web]
- On the date of the zero group: "such a zero group as they correspond to could not possibly have been foreseen under the conditions of chemical knowledge at the time of the discovery of the periodic law in 1869; and, although I had a vague notion that hydrogen might be preceded by some elements of less atomic weights, I dared not put forward such a proposal, because it was purely conjectural, and I feared to injure the first impression of the periodic law by its introduction." (OCR lines about 1110-1135)
- The zero group is introduced for the argon analogues (noble gases): "should form a special zero group which at once expresses the fact of their chemical indifference" (about line 915). Two hypothetical lighter elements: x (the ether) and y ("coronium ?").
- Escape-velocity argument: particles must exceed the escape velocity of a star 50 times the sun's mass, "nearly 2,240,000 metres per second", and stay below light speed. So the atomic weight of x lies between "0.000,000,96 and 0.000,000,000,053, if that of H = 1".
- His preferred values: "an atomic weight nearly one millionth that of hydrogen, and travel with a velocity of about 2,250 kilometres per second." He rejects the lower bound because it "would in some measure answer to a revival of the emission theory of light".
- The ether as "a gas ... belonging to the zero group of elements", able to permeate "all substances, gaseous, liquid, and solid".
Comparison with the essay (for the reviewers)
| item | Mendeleev 1904 | Boyd essay |
|---|---|---|
| when the zero group / lighter-than-H elements appeared | not in 1869; he says he "dared not" propose them then | "In this first publication [1869], Mendeleev placed a special 'Zero Group' ... lighter than hydrogen" |
| atomic weight of x | "nearly one millionth" of H (bounds 9.6e-7 to 5.3e-11) | "100,000,000 times lighter than hydrogen" (1e-8, inside his bounds, not his preferred value) |
| velocity | "about 2,250 kilometres per second" (2.25e6 m/s) | "2,500,000 meters per second" |
| source of the gas | (not checked this run: the stellar-origin passage) | "violent bombardments internal to stars" |
Bearing on the claims
Claim 1 (Mendeleev's Zero Group aether). This is the primary source the essay names but does not cite. It confirms that Mendeleev did propose a chemical ether gas x lighter than hydrogen, in 1902/1904, and it gives his own numbers. It contradicts the essay's dating of the idea to the 1869 table. Mendeleev's own derivation of the velocity (an escape-velocity bound) is a worked calculation the primer could reuse.