Cavendish's unpublished inverse-square law of electricity
Ley del cuadrado inverso eléctrica de Cavendish (inédita)
- Date
- c. 1771-1773 · confidence medium
- Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Henry Cavendish
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Using concentric spheres, Cavendish deduced that the electric force varies as the inverse square of distance, with an exponent of 2 to within about 2%. He never published his manuscripts, which Maxwell edited in 1879.
John Robison (Edinburgh) obtained a similar result around 1769-73, also unpublished in time. Publication priority belongs to Coulomb (1785); experimental priority to Cavendish or Robison.
What it led to
- a precision of the exponent greater than Coulomb's (checked by Maxwell in 1879)
- definition of capacity and potential in unpublished manuscripts
- belated recognition as Coulomb's forerunner