ABSTRACT
James Clerk Maxwell had, by 1864, developed a set of equations which correctly described the relationships among electric fields, magnetic fields, and stationary and moving electric charges. The relativity principle demanded that these relationships remain exactly the same no matter what inertial coordinate system the observations were referred to. The relativity principle may be used in different ways. If the readers think they know a law of nature which connects various observed quantities, the readers can use the relativity principle to find out how the observed quantities must transform. What is surprising—indeed astonishing—is that Maxwell’s laws of electricity and magnetism have required no changes at high velocities. The experimental observations available to Maxwell of the effects produced by moving charges were all made on slowly moving charges. Historically, electromagnetic theory preceded special relativity theory—as is attested by the fact that Einstein’s great 1905 paper bore the title “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.”
