THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES
Olivier Darrigol
Abstract
Abstract Electrodynamics early implied the relative motion of bodies through Faraday’s induction phenomenon. Faraday’s rules and the German theories of electrodynamics all assumed the full relativity of electrodynamic phenomena in their very foundation. In contrast, the Maxwellian field theories implied effects of the motion of bodies with respect to the ether. Maxwell, Hertz, and Heaviside retrieved the relativity of induction by assuming the complete drag of ether by matter, against Fresnel. They still imagined effects of motion through the ether, for instance, a diminished repulsion for charges traveling together through the ether. Toward the end of the century, Lorentz reconciled the electromagnetic field theory with optical relativity by having atoms, ions, and electrons freely move through a stationary ether. He relied on transformations that formally related the states of an electrodynamic system carried by the earth through the ether to the state of the same system at rest in the ether.