ABSTRACT

The development of electromagnetism took place very slowly compared to mechanics, although the two branches of physics started at about the same time. While only two decades after Galileo, Newton wrote down the laws of mechanics in their entirety, two centuries after Gilbert, there was still confusion about the laws of electricity and magnetism. The reason-aside from the fact that mechanics had a powerful mind such as Newton’s on its side-was that electricity was intrinsically more complicated and required substantially more observations before it succumbed to a rigorous theoretical analysis.