dynamics without doing violence to it. The experimental work of Kaufmann, in 1901, made it abundantly clear that the "mass" of an electron depended on its velocity. So early as 1881, J. J. Thomson had shown that the inertia of a charged particle increased with its velocity. Abraham now deduced a formula for the variation of mass with velocity, on the hypothesis that an electron always remained a rigid sphere. Lorentz proceeded on the assumption that the electron shared in the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction and obtained a totally different formula. A very careful series of measurements carried out independently by Bücherer, Wolz, Hupka and finally Neumann in 1913, decided conclusively in favour of the Lorentz formula. This "contractile" formula follows immediately as a direct consequence of the new Theory of Relativity, without any assumption as regards the electrical origin of inertia. Thus the complete agreement of experimental facts with the predictions of the new theory must be considered as confirming it as a principle which goes even beyond the electron itself. The greatest triumph of this new theory consists, indeed, in the fact that a large number of results, which had formerly required all kinds of special hypotheses for their explanation, are now deduced very simply as inevitable consequences of one single general principle.
We have now traced the history of the development of the restricted or special theory of Relativity, which is mainly concerned with optical and electrical phenomena. It was first offered by Einstein in 1905. Ten years later, Einstein formulated his second theory, the Generalised Principle of Relativity. This new theory is mainly a theory of gravitation and has very little connection with optics and electricity. In one sense, the second theory is indeed a further generalisation of the restricted principle, but the former does not really contain the latter as a special case.
