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Ole Christensen Rømer
Ole Christensen Rømer first theorized, then proved that what was thought of in the 1600s, that was was not instantaneous, and in fact, was finite, and moved at a set speed. -
The Redefinition of the Speed of Light
In the 1800s Hippolyte Fizeau developed a way to measure the speed of light, and had made an accurate prediction that it was around the speed of 300000m/s, which is quite accurate for the time they were in. In the later 1860s, Léon Foucault predicted a value even closer, that light travels at 298000 m/s. -
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell was a scottish physiscit, and mathematitian. His importance in the discovery and exploration of light was his publication of A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in 1865. His theory was that light, in fact was an electromagnetic wave, and Maxwell also proposed that light is in fact undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. At the time, the speed of light, the variable c (this was created by Maxwell) was not known, CONTINUE -
Maxwell CONTINUED
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Albert Einstein comes into the picture
Albert Einstein shows in his special theory of relativity that the variable c has applications outside of measuring light. -
Calculating the actual speed of light
In 1975 the speed of light was known to be 299,792,458 m/s, the way this was calculated was with this quote "The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second." ("Resolution 1 of the 17th CGPM". BIPM. 1983. Retrieved 2009-08-23.(