ABSTRACT
Early nineteenth century physical thought was dominated by the action at a distance concept, formulated by Newton more than 100 years earlier in his immensely successful theory of gravitation. In the 1860s James Clerk Maxwell created what A. Einstein called "the most important invention since Newton's time" — a set of equations describing an entirely field-based theory of electromagnetism. A substance called the luminiferous aether, long thought to support the transverse waves of light, was put to the task of carrying the vibrations of the electromagnetic field as well. The experiments of Faraday in the 1830s placed doubt on whether action at a distance really describes electric and magnetic phenomena. Faraday's ideas presented a new world view: electromagnetic phenomena occur in the region surrounding charged bodies, and can be described in terms of the laws governing the "field" of his lines of force.
