WI: James Maxwell formulates *Special Relativity

Not going to happen.

At minimum, you need a couple of decades for people to reallyget to appreciate the equations. Even then you probably need something like the michelson morley interferometer results which only happened about the rturn of the century. 1898?

Up til then, people assumed that maxwells equations happened in a priviledged reference frame, the aether, and until you disprove that, special relativity is unneeded.


Edit. Micelsonmorley was a bit earlier, 1887, and Fitzgerald and Lorentz quickly realized that meant that 'Lorentz transformations' had to happen. SO. If either of them had actually believed their math, you could have gotten something like Special Relativity by, say 1895, a decade earlier than einstein, but its very, very hard to push it back much further. Your certainly not going to get it into Maxwells lifetime.

Part of Einsteins genius was being able to believe his own math, which no else managed in that situation.

(Of course he never believed quantum mechanics math/experiments, so the man wasnt perfect.)
 
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