Abstract :
J. B. Whitehead: Those of us who have had occasion to measure small values of dielectric loss with the quadrant electrometer instrument, know of the apparent facility and convenience of that instrument. I say “apparent” because we also know that we soon run into many entirely unexpected and apparently inexplicable phenomena in connection with the instrument. In the literature we find a great deal on the instrument and think we will be able to clear up our difficulties. As we go on, however, we find that the points of view of the several people who have written on the quadrant electrometer often differ. The several authors introduce different constants and we are left with a large number of constants, whose relative importance we are unable to determine easily.
