Rydberg Mechanics

First, a disclaimer: This may sound correct or obvious, but if so, it is because that is the way I write.  Nothing should be taken as either factual or as representing the opinions of educated physicists.

This is the third of my crank ideas - technically in this case it isn't my idea, and the idea itself wasn't a crank idea, but rather the crank comes in because I insist on thinking a hundred year old discarded idea is probably true.  This will be the crankmost yet.

So in the early part of the 20th century, a physicists, like many physicists, was working on solving the fundamental problem for which quantum physics was the solution: Why elements emit specific wavelengths of light, instead of all wavelengths of light.

The name of this particular physicist is Johannes Rydberg, and we still use his equations for light emission today.

His theory, as I understand it, was that we got specific wavelengths of light because those wavelengths were the resonant frequencies of electrons in a given atomic configuration.  He spent a lot of time on this, and managed to calculate out that this model worked for hydrogen.  Then quantum physics came out, solved the problem, and he abandoned this hypothesis.

I think he abandoned it too quickly, or perhaps the idea came too early - lacking modern computers, the task was quite tedious and very manual.  I suspect Rydberg was correct - and that by extension, quantum physics, or at least the portion that says energy is strictly quantized, probably isn't.  This is not to say it isn't an accurate map of reality - it clearly is, it has worked extremely well for the past century.  But rather, it is to say that I believe it is a less accurate map of reality than Rydberg's.