On the Relations between Maxwell’s Fundamental Electromagnetic Equations and the Fundamental Equations of the Opposing Electromagnetics

This chapter attempts to demonstrate the truth of Maxwell’s equations by starting from premises that are generally admitted in the opposing system of electromagnetics, and by using propositions which are familiar in it. When Ampere heard of Hans Christian Oersted’s discovery that the electric current sets a magnetic needle in motion, he suspected that electric currents would exhibit moving forces between themselves. In particular, when the electric forces that act on the ring-magnet are due, not to electric charges, but to a second ring-magnet of diminishing moment, their distribution is the same as if they were due to an electric double layer. Bernhard Riemann in 1858 and Ludwig Lorenz in 1867, with a view to associating optical and electrical phenomena with one another, postulated the same or quite similar laws for the propagation of the potentials.