The development of electrodynamics as a theory of action at a distance in the nineteenth century

We present the construction, carried out over about seventy years, from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century, of a theory of electromagnetic interactions described in terms of forces at a distance. We begin the exposition with Coulomb’s electrostatic formulation, emphasizing the way in which he takes the first steps towards the characterization of electric charge as a quantitative property of matter. We pass through Hans Christian Oersted’s experiments revealing the connections between electricity and magnetism, and then through the force law proposed by Ampère to describe actions between wires through which flow electric currents. Afterwards, our analysis arrive at the work of the German scientists Theodor Fechner and WilhelmWeber, focusing on the latter’s attempt to generalize Ampère’s work and elaborate a complete theory of electromagnetic forces that also encompasses the inductive phenomena discovered by Faraday. We also emphasize the investigation of the origins of these interactions based on the construction of an outline of a theory of matter, correlated to all this research.

Keywords:
History of Physics; Electromagnetism; Electrodynamics; Action at a distance