The history of the vacuum permittivity and permeability

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Aug 12 2003 - 00:47:05 MDT

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    Either I'm Googling on the wrong terms, or, in some impossible way, this
    information exists yet cannot be found on Google.

    What is the history of the measurement of the permittivity of free space,
    aka the vacuum permittivity or the electric constant, and the measurement
    of the permeability of free space, aka the vacuum permeability or the
    magnetic constant? In particular, what were the experimentally measured
    values of these constants in 1861 when Maxwell published his calculation
    of the speed of light from these two constants? I know that the estimate
    of the speed of light was Foucault's 1850 estimate of 298,000 km/s. I
    can't find any historical account of these two constants at all, so I
    suspect I'm Googling under the wrong search terms.

    -- 
    Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
    Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
    


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