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The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald-Lorentz deformation hypothesis

Harvey R Brown
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Abstract

One of the widespread confusions concerning the history of the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment has to do with the initial explanation of this celebrated null result due independently to FitzGerald and Lorentz. In neither case was a strict, longitudinal length contraction hypothesis invoked, as is commonly supposed. Lorentz postulated, particularly in 1895, any one of a certain family of possible deformation effects for rigid bodies in motion, including purely transverse alteration, and expansion as well as contraction; FitzGerald may well have had the same family in mind. A careful analysis of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which reveals a number of serious inadequacies in many text-book treatments) indeed shows that strict contraction is not required.

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Harvey R Brown. 2001-04-12. The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald-Lorentz deformation hypothesis. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1379733

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