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> If by "relativity" you mean special relativity, nobody used it for anything when it was published. The first real use of it theoretically was to explain the C
by throwaway81523 4y ago
> If by "relativity" you mean special relativity, nobody used it for anything when it was published. The first real use of it theoretically was to explain the Compton effect in 1921,
The Michelson-Morley experiment was in 1887 and a whole bunch of theories resembling relativity were developed to explain it. SR itself was one of those, and the cleanest.
- pdonis 4y agoYes, good point. Also, classical electrodynamics based on Maxwell's Equations was already known to be Lorentz invariant, not Galilean invariant, so SR can be thought of as simply taking the invariance properties of electrodynamics and "porting" them to mechanics (whereas pretty much all other approaches went the other way, trying to "port" the invariance properties of Newtonian mechanics to electrodynamics).