Electricity in Court

In his Chicago courtroom last week Circuit Judge Harry M. Fisher stared at a voltmeter which had been placed before him on the bench. The voltmeter was connected to a switch, and the switch was connected with the courtroom lights. When the switch was closed Judge Fisher saw the voltmeter needle leap from 0 to 110 on the dial. What he had to decide was whether the thing that made the needle leap was tangible or intangible. There to help him, but arguing on opposite sides of the dispute, were two distinguished Nobel Prizemen.

Point at issue was whether electric current was subject to Illinois 2% occupation tax. Twenty power companies headed by Commonwealth Edison, Peoples Gas Light & Coke, and Central Illinois Public Service contended that current was an intangible, hence nontaxable. The State contended that current was a tangible and taxable commodity. The companies stood to lose in taxes, the State to gain in revenue, some $5,000,000 annually.

No one attacked the orthodox teaching of physics that electric current is a flow of matter having mass. A current of one ampere is a flow of 6,281 billion billion electrons per second past a given point. An electron is a particle of matter weighing 0.8999 billionths of a billionth of a billionth of a gram. But was electric current tangible?

Up rose beetle-browed Dr. Arthur Holly Compton (Nobel Prize, physics, 1927). Electricity was tangible, said he, because it could be seen, heard, felt, tasted.

Up rose wiry, tousle-haired Dr. Irving Langmuir (Nobel Prize, chemistry, 1932). Electricity was intangible, said he, because it could not be seen, heard, felt, tasted.

Circuit Judge Fisher watched, listened, pondered. Then he solemnly pronounced electricity a tangible, taxable commodity.

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