ABSTRACT
The special theory of relativity arose as a way of accounting for the facts of electromagnetism. We have here a somewhat curious history. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the theory of electricity was wholly dominated by the Newtonian analogy. Two electric charges attract each other if they are of different kinds, one positive and one negative, but repel each other if they are of the same kind; in each case, the force varies as the inverse square of the distance, as in the case of gravitation. This force was conceived as an action at a distance, until Faraday, by a number of remarkable experiments, demonstrated the effect of the intervening medium. Faraday was no mathematician; Clerk Maxwell first gave a mathematical form to the results suggested by Faraday’s experiments. Moreover Clerk Maxwell gave grounds for thinking that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, consisting of electromagnetic waves. The medium for the transmission of electromagnetic effects could therefore be taken to be the aether, which had long been assumed for the
transmission of light. The correctness of Maxwell’s theory of light was proved by the experiments of Hertz in manufacturing electromagnetic waves; these experiments afford the basis for radio and radar. So far, we have a record of triumphant progress, in which theory and experiment alternately assume the leading role. At the time of Hertz’s experiments, the aether seemed securely established, and in just as strong a position as any other scientific hypothesis not capable of direct verification. But a new set of facts began to be discovered, and gradually the whole picture was changed.
