electrodynamics from ampere to einstein aug 2000

[...]... benefitted from the exceptional facilities of the Max Planck Institut fUr Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, thanks to Jiirgen Renn's regard for in my work When I came to the history of electrodynamics, I contacted Jed Buchwald, to whose penetrating studies lowed much of my interest in this subject At every stage of my project, he offered generously of his time to discuss historical puzzles and to help... notation with modern vector notation, for the latter can be to a large extent regarded as an abbreviation of the former Sections devoted to the origins of the vector notation should correct any resulting misconception My study of the vast primary literature over the past few years has been greatly aided by the abundance and exceIIence of more focused histories of electrodynamics On Ampere, I have often... an irreproachable mathematical form On 25 September, Ampere showed to the skeptical Academicians that flat helical currents attracted each other and responded to a bar magnet He had ordered the rather sophisticated apparatus from a competent mechanician The essential difficulty was to feed the current into the helix without impeding its mobility Ampere' s universal expedient consisted of small mercury... interaction of two current elements, here AB and CD, from the action of the rest of the circuit to which they belong The 20 2.\ Ampere I820b: 238 21 Ampere 1820a, I820b 22 Cf Ampere [1801] Ampere I820a 1820b Cf Blondel 1982: 75-6; Hofmann 1995: 242-4 8 FIG Foundations 1.1 Apparatus for showing the eqUl valence between a helical current and a bar magnet (Ampere 1820b) b n· v B 0 X G t + a.- D ~ C D B :It... obtained by rigidly connecting the two elements (Ampere I 826b: 1-2) 26 Ampere 1820a: 247-8 (memoire du 9 octobre) has only a brief summary of his analysis The full version is in Ampere [1820c] Cf Blondel 1982: 83-5; Hofmann 1995: 239-41 27 Ampere 1820b for the description of two devices of this kind, the first of which was shown to Biot and Arago on 17 October Cf Blondel 1982: 84-5: Hofmann 1995: 245-6... spirals or helices to magnets In another class he examined the more fundamental action between rectilinear currents There he wished to obtaIn quantitative results He failed, however, because the correspondIng forces were too small and the voltaic source too unstable He then switched to the null method, which he believed to provide precision and generality without yielding any number but zero To the extent... Rive 1821: 201 Ampere: S attractions 15 a helix and a bar magnet Yet Ampere' s theory met much skepticism or hostility Foreign physicists were not likely to follow Ampere' s mathematical reasoning, and they preferred to see the action between two currents as a consequence of temporary magnetism The French savants were more at ease with Ampere' s calculus, but they condemned his departure from Laplacian... lofty summits of the history of electrodynamics will no doubt attract new climbers I shall be happy if I have marked out a few convenient trails in this magnificent scenery The research on which this book is based required access to well-equipped institutes, libraries, and archives I was fortunate to belong to the REHSEIS group of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and to receive the warm... authoritative studies by Gerald Holton, Arthur Miller, Michel Paty, and Jiirgen Renn No matter how rich these sources and how strong my efforts to synthetize and complement them, I do not pretend to have closed a chapter of the history of science Preface xi On the contrary, I hope to stimulate further studies and reflections beyond the selfimposed limitations of my own work and into the gaps of which I am... electric forces acting on EC and FG have, to a sufficient approximation no influence on the motion of the moving part ECDF of the circuit, because the corresponding torque is negligible (assuming with Ampere that the forces between two elements are parallel to the line joining the elements) " Ampere later explained that the forces between two elements had to be central, because if they were not, a . w0 h0" alt="" Electrodynamics from Ampere to Einstein OLIVIER DARRIGOL Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Electrodynamics from Ampere to Einstein