ABSTRACT
Electricity had become a central problem of physical science as a result of Faraday's researches. It was seen to be an important property of all matter, a property intimately connected with the physical and chemical behaviour of materials. Each of Faraday's new discoveries had created many new problems for a general theory of electricity. One fundamental problem was to find a unified theory of the action of static electricity, Amperian attraction of currents and electromagnetic induction. In order to understand the role Maxwell's theory had in the continuing argument over the nature of the physical world, it is necessary to appreciate three important elements in Maxwell's problem situation, in addition to the discoveries and theories of Faraday. The great success of field theory was the discovery of electromagnetic waves by Hertz. The radiation from Hertz's oscillator could be well accounted for by Maxwell's theory.
