By the century's end, discrepancies in the idea of an all-pervading ether began to appear. It was expected that light would travel at a fixed speed through the ether but that if you were traveling through the ether in the same direction as the light, its speed would appear lower, and if you were traveling in the opposite direction of the light, its speed would appear higher. Yet a series of experiments failed to support this idea. The most careful and accurate of these experiments was carried out by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887 . They compared the speed of light in two beams at right angles to each other. As the
Earth rotates on its axis and orbits the Sun, the apparatus moves through the ether with varying speed and direction.