The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald–Lorentz deformation hypothesis

Abstract

“Can there be some point in the theory of Mr. Michelson’s experiment which has yet been overlooked?” H. A. Lorentz, letter to Lord Rayleigh, August 1892. One of the widespread confusions concerning the history of the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment has to do with the initial explanation of this celebrated null result due independently to FitzGerald and Lorentz. In neither case was a strict, longitudinal length contraction hypothesis invoked, as is commonly supposed. Lorentz postulated, particularly in 1895, any one of a certain family of possible deformation effects for rigid bodies in motion, including purely transverse alteration, and expansion as well as contraction; FitzGerald may well have had the same family in mind. A careful analysis of the Michelson–Morley experiment (which reveals a number of serious inadequacies in many textbook treatments) indeed shows that strict contraction is not required.