In 1879, A. A. Michelson made 100 determinations of the velocity
of light in air using a modification of a method proposed by the French
physicist Foucault. The data are given here as reported by Stigler.
The measurements are derived from sets of often widely disparate
numbers of observations. The numbers are in km/sec, and have had
299,000 subtracted from them. The currently accepted “true”
velocity of light in vacuum is 299,792.5 km/sec. Stigler has
applied the corrections used by Michelson and reports that the
“true” value appropriate for comparison to these measurements
is 734.5. Each trial may be a summary of several experimental
observations.