Dayton Clarence Miller (March 13, 1866 – February 22, 1941)[1][2][3][4] was an American physicist, astronomer, acoustician, and accomplished amateur flautist.
Following the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, Miller used cathode-ray tubes built by William Crookes to make some of the first photographic images of concealed objects, including a bullet within a man's limb.
[5] In 1900, he began work with Edward Morley on the detection of aether drift,[6] at the time one of the "hot" areas of fundamental physics.
Miller continued to work on refining his experimental techniques after 1904, conducting millions of measurements on aether drift, and eventually developing the most sensitive interferometer in the world at that time.
Values that high could be eliminated due to other physical phenomenon like stellar aberration, which put upper limits on the amount of dragging.
Even at the time, Miller's work was increasingly considered to be a statistical anomaly, an opinion that remains true today,[14] given an ever-growing body of negative results.
Dr. Miller published manuals designed to be student handbooks for the performance of experimental problems in physics.
In 1908, Miller's interest in acoustics led him to develop a machine to record sound waves photographically, called the phonodeik.
During World War I, Miller worked with the physical characteristics of pressure waves of large guns at the request of the government.