The equation E = mc2 is synonymous with the name Einstein. However, it may come as a surprise to many to find out that Einstein was not in fact the first to derive the famous equation. In 1903, the Italian Olinto De Pretto, who was an engineer/industrialist with experience in materials and their properties, gave the precise formula E = mc2. It was first published in June 1903. De Pretto delivered a second paper on November 29th 1903 in Venice, and this paper was published in the proceedings of the Venetian Royal Institute of Science, Literature and Art in February 1904. This is a translation of what De Pretto concluded in that paper:
Given then E = mc2, m = 1 kg and c = 3 x 105 km/s. anyone can see that the quantity of calories obtained is represented by 16794 followed by 9 zeros, that is more than ten thousand billions. To what terrible result has our reasoning brought us? Nobody will easily admit that an amount of energy equal to the quantity that can be derived from millions and millions of kilograms of coal is concealed and stored at a latent state in one kilogram of matter of any kind this idea will be undoubtedly considered foolish. However, even if the result of our calculations be reduced somewhat, it should be nevertheless admitted that inside matter there must be stored so much energy as to strike anyone's imagination. What is in comparison to it, the energy that can be derived from the richest combustible or from the most powerful chemical reaction?
De Pretto was amazed at his E = mc2 equation.[3] What more proof do we need that this Italian preceded Einstein by two years?
Footnote: [3] In his paper, De Pretto used the symbol v for the speed of light.
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The reasoning used by De Pretto is very simple. Here is a synopsis of his derivation in a section headed Energy of the Ether and Potential Energy in Matter:
Because De Pretto used the symbol v for the speed of light, his finding gives the same mc2 as used nowadays. Therefore, we can conclude that the formula E = mc2 was first discovered in 1903 by De Pretto. It was a 'latent energy' of mv2 that De Pretto deduced as being present in all matter. The energy had to be released, and he did not know how that could be done.
There was a misprint in De Pretto's paper (kg for g). I wonder what errors of no significance have been made in this book. The famous Michelson made three such errors in his publications. Fortuitously, two of these cancelled each other out and the third was picked up in a later publication, as will be discussed in a later chapter.
De Pretto's reasoning is based on logic. Because it undermines the belief that Einstein was first with the famous equation, this important matter is highlighted at the very beginning of this book. The original Italian paper was obtained to confirm that it really existed in the original Italian form and that the date was right. Some people will be offended by the notion that a mere industrialist/engineer proposed the famous equation first. However, only one person can be first, and the nationality or occupation of the proponent is irrelevant.
De Pretto's analysis was before the discoveries of the details of the makeup of an atom. His reasoning conforms to the concept of 'binding' energy, which was later identified as holding the nucleus of the atom together. To pull apart the constituent parts of a nucleus of an atom requires energy equal to the binding energy that holds it together. The mass of a nucleus is lower than the mass of its constituent parts; the difference is represented by the mass equivalent to the energy that holds it together. In other words, the binding energy concerned is equal to the 'missing' mass multiplied by c2. De Pretto had reasoned that somehow there had to be a potential energy (binding energy) residing within the atom that held it in its configuration.
Could Einstein have had access to the work of De Pretto? Was there a family connection? Michael Besso, a colleague of Einstein and a lifelong friend, is mentioned by name at the end of Einstein's first 1905 paper on relativity: "I wish to say that in working with the problem here dealt with I have had the loyal assistance of my friend and colleague Al Besso, and that I am indebted to him for several valuable suggestions."
Besso was also a friend of the De Pretto family and could surely have provided the common link and alerted Einstein to the De Pretto publication in Venice. Here are some of the family connections that existed. The young Einstein lodged with a family named Wintelers. A son of that family married Einstein's sister Maja, and a daughter of the family married the aforementioned Michael Besso. Furthermore, Einstein lived for a while in Italy, where his family moved when he was about 15. He had studied Italian at high
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school and got equal marks in German (his native tongue) and Italian (in which he was fluent). In the same publication in which his first 1905 paper on relativity appeared (Annalen der Physik), Einstein had reviewed several Italian articles - one in March 1905. He would have been well able to appreciate the writings of De Pretto.
The brother of Olinto De Pretto, Augusto De Pretto, was a colleague of Beniamino Besso, an uncle of Michael Besso. Augusto De Pretto and Beniamino Besso both worked as managers of the Italian Royal Railways, and it is obvious that Beniamino should have known something of the 'foolish ideas' of Augusto's younger brother. Beniamino Besso was always very close to Michael, who lived in his uncle Bengamino's house during his studies in Rome. Since De Pretto discussed his conjecture with people well before it was published in 1903 (he says that people considered him a fool!), it is certain that all people acquainted with him and his brothers knew of his 'foolish idea'.
De Pretto' s amazing paper must have created some controversy when it appeared in 1903. Sadly, De Pretto was shot dead by a woman over a business deal in 1921.
There are many earlier publications that describe particular experiments on the connection between mass, energy and the speed of light. Turner and Hazlett (1979) give a history of several derivations, including those by Hasenöhrl (1905) and Thompson (1881). Papers by Thompson (1885), Heaviside (1889), Poincaré (1900), Kaufann (1901 and 1903) Abraham (1902 and 1903), Lorentz (1904), Soddy (1904) and Hasenöhrl (1904 and 1905) are listed in a paper by Fadner (1988) entitled Did Einstein really discover E = mc2. These papers describe experiments on charged particles or electrons. Soddy is quoted as saying that "radioactivity occurs at the expense of the mass of the system."
Surprisingly, Fadner did not mention De Pretto or Preston (1875). A paper by Moody (2005) says that Preston, Poincaré and De Pretto pre-date Einstein in deriving the famous equation.
S Tolver Preston is also said by Bjerknes to have been the first to derive the equivalence of mass and energy by the formula E = mc2. Let us consider that claim. Preston assumed that the ether was comprised of particles that were travelling at the speed of light and, from this, worked out the energy that would be contained in the ether. Preston said that a volume of ether "representing the total mass of one grain would be contained in a cubical portion of space with the side of cube equal to forty-five feet". He continued:
It may be computed that a quantity of matter representing a total mass of only one grain, and possessing the normal velocity of the ether particles (that of a wave of light), encloses a store of energy represented by upwards of one thousand millions of foot-ton, or the mass of one single grain contains an energy not less than that possessed by a mass of forty thousand tons moving at a speed of a cannon ball (1,200 feet per second); or otherwise, a quantity of matter representing a mass of one grain endued with the velocity of the ether particles, encloses an amount of energy which, if entirely utilized would be competent to project a weight of one
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hundred thousand tons to a height of nearly two miles (1.9 miles).
In this example, Preston gets a value for E as less than one thousandth of mc2. He assumed that the energy contained in the ether was immense (mc2), where m was the mass of the matter contained in the ether. He discussed the transfer of such energy from the ether to ordinary matter as occurring in "explosives" or the "dynamic effect of lightning". Preston did not derive the energy in ordinary matter as being equal to mc2. We will meet this same Preston later in chapter 9 when discussing his experiments on unipolar induction.
The French scientist Poincaré, as described in Ives (1952), had derived an equivalence between energy, mass and the square of the speed of light in 1905. Poincaré also delivered a paper at St Louis, U.S.A. entitled The Principles of Mathematical Physics (1904), in which he stated:
The principle of relativity according to which the laws of physical phenomena should be the same, whether for an observer fixed or for an observer carried along in a uniform movement of translation; so that we have not and could not have any means of discerning whether or not we are carried along in such a motion.
Indeed, in a paper in 1906, Einstein had acknowledged that Poincaré had already derived the equivalence. When commenting on his own 1905 paper, where he originally gave the equivalence. Einstein wrote, "Even though the simple formal observations which must lead to the proof of this assumption is already contained in the main in a work by H Poincaré, I, for reasons of clarity, will not refer to that particular work" It is to be wondered what extra 'clarity' resulted from not mentioning the earlier work.
Another derivation is attributed to Heaviside in 1890; the reference to this is in the book Voice Across the Sea by Arthur C. Clarke (1974 edition), where we read, "By 1890 he had already arrived at a rigorous proof of the famous relationship E=MC2, thus anticipating Einstein's more general formulation of this law by some fifteen years." A search by this author of Heaviside' s papers and books failed to find that derivation. That does not mean that it does not exist; it merely indicates that the search by this author was unsuccessfull.
From the above discussion it is seen that a connection between mass, energy and the speed of light squared was known before Einstein entered the scene. We have a choice in determining who was the first to publish the equivalence between energy and mass in the famous equation. Depending on one's nationality, one can claim that the originator was one of several people.
One thing is certain, it was not Einstein who first developed the equation E = mc2.
De Pretto was the first to set down a logical reasoning behind his derivation of the famous equation and to set down the direct transformation of the mass of normal matter to the total equivalent amount of energy. Preston is ruled out on the basis that he was out by a factor of over 1,000. In relation to Preston's derivation, Moody noted that "it is unclear
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whether the calculations actually fit the equation E = mc2". Preston's calculations do not do so, as described above. De Pretto derived the precisely correct factor.
There was no Irish contender in this race. A neutral investigator gives De Pretto clear priority in this important scientific discovery.
Einstein gave no references to other authors in his 1905 paper. We can but wonder why! Was it simply plagiarism? Einstein's 1905 paper was 30 pages long, and the practice even at that time was to refer to earlier work in the particular field. The paper before Einstein's in the journal had 30 references, and the one after it had 12. During the entire year of 1905, Annalen der Physik had only Einstein's paper and three very short experimental papers that did not give references. In an earlier paper in 1905 on a different topic and in a paper in 1904, Einstein had given references.
Some authors claim to have uncovered a flaw in SR. We shall not dwell on those claims of a theoretical flaw because this book is concerned with experimental evidence that contradicts SR. An example is Ives (1952), who says that there is a flaw in Einstein's derivation of the equivalence. His short paper concludes that Einstein "did not derive the mass-energy relation". This is a topic debated over the years, but no clear outcome has emerged. Many publications claim to have identified a flaw in Einstein's papers while many other papers refute such claims. Such debates congest the Internet with vituperative controversy, are not fruitful and lead nowhere. Let us give Einstein the benefit of the doubt and proceed to examine in the following chapters how his theories stand up to experimental evidence. In 1905, Einstein said that "the introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require an 'absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties".
Einstein left the possibility, but not the necessity, of an ether. In 1935, in his book The World as I See It, Einstein wrote that:
Space without an ether is inconceivable. For in such a space there would not only be no propagation of light, but no possibility of the existence of scales and clocks, and therefore no spatio-temporal distances in the physical sense. But this ether must not be thought of as endowed with the properties characteristic of ponderable media as composed of particles the motion of which can be followed; nor may the concept of motion be applied to it.
In 1920, Einstein gave a lecture in Leyden in Holland, where he reinstated the idea of an ether. "Space without ether is unthinkable," he said. So, Einstein was somewhat ambivalent on the ether question.
Einstein gave several derivations of the famous equation. In 1906, he derived the equivalence between energy and mass by a different method. He did this by considering the momentum of photons as they moved from one end of a closed box to the other. In 1922, Einstein derived the equivalence by yet another method.
Einstein's SR was devised after the famous formula was derived by De Pretto. It should be stressed, therefore, that any process that conforms to the famous formula in no way necessarily confirms SR. This is despite the fact that many texts claim that every confirmation of E = mc2 is proof of SR.
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The 'universal theory' developed in this book does not propose any amendment to the mass-energy equivalence. E = mc2 is correct, but this has nothing to do with SR, which will be shown to be incorrect in the following chapters
However, Einstein is generally credited with highlighting the fact that "with bodies whose energy-content is variable to a high degree (e.g. with radium salts) the theory may be put to the test" (Einstein 1905, second paper). This is the precursor and forecast of atomic energy, nuclear power and the atom bomb and is a stunning contribution to the development of physics. De Pretto had mentioned the radium salts in passing in his 1903 paper. Was Einstein the first to spot that possibility as a practical possibility? He was the first located by this author.
On the above evidence, the famous equation E = mc2 was not discovered by Einstein but by De Pretto. It was derived before 1905. Italians have tried to get the matter widely known with limited success (Professor B. Monti (1996) and Professor U. Bartocci, who published a book on the topic in 1999). Perhaps an Irish author is in a good position to state the priority of De Pretto.
In a book entitled Albert Einstein the Incorrigible Plagiarist (2002), Bjerknes carries the matter to extremes. "Was Einstein an honest man?", "Was his memory faulty?", "Was he a liar?" are samples of questions in that book. Bjerknes also makes a plausible argument in favour of Einstein's first wife, Mileva, having submitted the 1905 first paper under her name. Einstein later paid over to Mileva the Nobel Prize that he was awarded years after he had abandoned her for a new life and wife. Why?
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