The very first step into this newly discovered territory made the riddle still more bewildering. As we have said, Maxwell's use of a material analogy as a means of formulating mathematically the properties of electro-magnetic fields of force had led to results which brought electricity into close conjunction with light. In his own way Crookes focused, to begin with, his attention entirely on the light-like character of electric effects in a vacuum. It was precisely these observations, however, as continued by Lenard and others, which presently made it necessary to see in electricity nothing else than a special manifestation of inert mass.