Was Maxwell et al on the right track with their descriptions of electricity and magnetism? Maybe - depends who you BELIEVE because science (KNOWING), to this day, does not honestly know what electricity and magnetism is. It is fairly well accepted now that an electric current is NOT a flow of individual and discrete electrons. One reason we know this is so is because electrons are not discrete entities but are in fact (as originally conceived) a unit of measure; i.e., the smallest possible quantity of electricity or electric charge. The electron is a quantity and not a thing. The electron, the first quantum particle to be acknowledged, was "officially" discovered in 1897 by J. J. Thomson. However we know Keely worked with a wide variety of subatomic and sub-quantum "particles" years before that. So if electrons do not exist as discrete hard balls or spheres - what are they, why do they exist and how do they perform their functions?
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Figure 16.00 - James Clerk James Clerk Maxwell. | Figure 16.00.05 - Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940) |