Einstein, Albert

I am studying again in depth Hertz’s propagation of electric force because I didn’t understand Helmholtz’s treatise on the principle of least action in electrodynamics.

I am more and more convinced that the electrodynamics of moving bodies of today is not correct. It should be possible to present it in a simpler way.

The “ether” in the theories of electricity led to a medium without a physical meaning.

I think that the electric forces can be directly defined only for empty space, which is also emphasized by Hertz.

Further, electric currents will have to be conceived of not, as “the vanishing of electric polarization in time” but as motion of true electric masses whose physical reality seems to be confirmed by the electrochemical equivalents.

Mathematically, they are always in the form

∂X/∂x + ∂Y/∂y + ∂Z/∂z .

Electrodynamics would then be the theory of the motion of moving electricities and magnetism in empty space.

Which of the two conceptions must be chosen will have to be revealed by radiation experiments.