ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a number of events that historically were important in understanding the nature of the blackbody problem. It also explains the scene for understanding the wider problem of blackbody radiation by introducing quantities central to its description and the laws it obeys. Known as thermal radiation, the body which radiates the greatest amount of energy compared to all other bodies at the same temperature is referred to as a blackbody. The unknown universal function necessarily comes from an understanding of the physics of thermal radiation and was something, that had to wait until the work of Planck at the beginning of the twentieth century. The chapter concludes with an examination of two important laws for thermal radiation, which while initially found using arguments based on classical physics and thermodynamics, will be arrived at using arguments based on a powerful though often overlooked technique known as dimensional analysis.
