An Error within a Mistake?

Abstract

In recent years much work has been done on the system of electrodynamics that was developed by the German polymath Hermann Helmholtz in the late 1860s and throughout the 1870s. In 1874 Helmholtz used this new electrodynamics briefly to examine a situation that seems to be quite similar to one analyzed half a decade later by his student Heinrich Hertz in a manuscript written for Helmholtz's eyes. Though Hertz did not refer explicitly to Helmholtz's previous considerations of 1874, his analysis was based unequivocally on equations that were unique to Helmholtz. Yet in this particular application of the master's system, its creator in 1874 and his student in 1879 seem to have arrived at markedly different, indeed at conflicting, results.

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