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aspects of the Second Scientific Revolution." Primarily for this work, Albert Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. After all this thought and preparation, the experiment became what might be called the most famous failed experiment to date. The famous Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 showed that the then accepted aether theory needed to be modified. FitzGerald and Lorentz, independent of each other proposed a length contraction of the experimental apparatus in the direction of motion (with respect to the Luminiferous aether) that would explain the null result of the Michelson Morley experiment. Trouton made several experiments seeking for a measureable effect of this contraction in the lab frame (the inertial frame of reference of an observer co-moving with the experimental apparatus). He made several attempts with Henry R. Noble in the Trouton—Noble experiments and later in 1908 with Rankine in the Trouton-Rankine experiment. The Trouton-Rankine experiment was an experiment designed to measure if the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction of an object according to one frame (as defined by the luminiferous aether) produced a measurable effect in the rest frame of the object, so that the ether would act as a "preferred frame". The experiment was first performed by Frederick Thomas Trouton and Alexander Oliver Rankine in 1908. Length contraction as a physical effect on bodies composed of atoms held together by electromagnetic forces was proposed independently by George FitzGerald"! and by Hendrik Lorentz ™. 92