The existence of the electron was predicted by professor George Johnstone Stoney in 1874, and later proven by Thomson.

Poincaré, one of the best mathematicians ever, knew Einstein personally, and he said Einstein was actually a poor mathematician. But he also said something interesting about the young Einstein. Because of his exceptional ability to think simultaneously in all directions, Poincaré kept it for possible, he would make one day a great discovery. Well, he was right about that.

I remember my physics teacher one day said: Let's prove E = mc², and he started writing on a classical blackboard. He used the Maxwell wave theory for that. After two hours of writing he was finished, and baffled the students with the ending: E = mc². I still have the copies of what that genius wrote on the board, but all I learned from that was, this formula is extremely difficult to prove.

Please don't get me wrong about Einstein, but I don't like his attitude, as if he discovered relativity all by himself, by taking the theory of Newton not for granted. How clever of him. He writes, you always have to ask yourself : Is something true, and where is the proof. (These words I quote from Einstein's book about general relativity, it is directly in his introduction pages). Well, so that is what I did. So what did Einstein present? When looking for proof of E = mc², I read carefully his text, only to find out the proof is MISSING. Instead of that he takes the equations of Professor Lorenz, but not even by saying so. He just writes them down "as is" and begins to derive E = mc² from that in less than two pages. Hmmm. that is curious, my physics teacher needed two HOURS of writing for that. So I looked better into it. A small note slipped my attention initially, which refers to an unimportant looking page at the back of the book, where you will find then, he "borrowed" some formulas from Lorenz. He writes not what these are for, or why he does so. In the internet I found, these LORENZ formulas describe how items change mass if velocity approaches the speed of light, and how time slows down if that happens. Now look at that. This was presented by LORENZ, when Einstein was a child. Without these formulas, and without these incredible discoveries from Professor Lorenz, Einstein would still be a nobody.

Such disrespect of other peoples intellectual property, to my opinion is unworthy behavior.

Time line of relativity discoveries

Relativity was in all modesty, DISCOVERED by Professor Stoney, who never made a big show out of it. Later this was improved with repeatable, fool proof EXPERIMENTS by Thomson. This work of Thomson was then mathematically PROVEN by Poincaré. After that, Lorenz created the formulas for TIME DILLETATION (compression of time, if approaching speed of light), the so called Lorenz transformations.

And then after all of that great work, came Einstein, who delivered a masterpiece, by his theory how the universe is curved in time and in space. It is just we need to put the things in the right order.

Stoney presented his discovery to the London scientific association called 'Fellows of the Royal Society' who did not understand what diamonds they were given, and not looked at it for decades. It was simply overseen and forgotten. Well luckily, somebody dug out this discovery, even when it was decades later. And no, it was not young Einstein who did that. It was the brilliant French Mathematician Poincaré. He realized much later, the Discovery of Stoney may have been the greatest ever. Just there was no mathematical proof. No calculations, no formulas.

Poincaré picked up Stoney's observations, and the experiments Thomson did, in which mass is proven to increases by high velocity. This resulted in the formula E=mc² by Poincaré. Which proved at the same time, Stoney's assumptions were true.

Also to mention here, the slowing down of time at high speed, was proven by the Dutch Professor Lorenz, long before Einstein, and the so called 'Lorenz Transformations' describe how this works.

Einstein used the Lorenz Transformation, to blatantly derive E=mc² the 'Einstein way'. (Also from Maxwell's wave theory it can be derived, but that is much more difficult). However Poincaré proved this a long time before already. So, what Einstein did, was no discovery, and no new theory at all. He just combined things which others prepared.

So lets talk about some discoveries here, by modest people. Let's talk about this great man Stoney, who predicted the Electron as well as relativity.

Here is what Stoney said: Initially, most models begin with practical observations. Or, if such are impossible, with imaginary situations. Both can be done. Then from this, an unproven model is constructed, describing the behavior of what we (think) we have seen. This model is unproven, but it appears to work.

Interestingly, at this point, this model can be useful. Logically it describes what we see, because the model was made like that. A special use comes however, when this model can now explain things we could not explain before, and a greater use comes when it predicts things which were so far unknown. To Stoney, this is the initial step into the direction of new theory.

Yet, the next progress is, when the model is partially, or fully proven mathematically. Then Stoney says, the model becomes a theory. With a model you can make predictions, which are items of discussion. With a theory, predictions are undisputed. These are TRUE, as long as the theory is not wrong. A theory can be wrong, when the math behind it has mistakes. Also a theory is wrong when predictions made with the theory, prove to be wrong. Though perhaps only details need to be adapted, and then we have a revised theory.

If the theory is right, predictions will come true one day.

The opposite may also happen, if a prediction turns out to be untrue, like when something occurs in contradiction to it. That is evidence, the theory needs as revision. These words, about the definition of a theory, were Stoney's.

Stoney was working around the year 1870. I want to point out the brilliancy of his discovery. Just Imagine yourself if a time, where people knew, electricity was invisible and could flow through wires, like water flows through a pipe. That was not a theory, but a model. For the rest of it, electricity was just abracadabra. That was Stoney's world he lived in. Not a single person on the whole planet had a clue about the origin of electricity, and any books or persons who tried to explain it, were all wrong.

Already in 1752, Benjamin Franklin assumed, lighting was caused by is 'something' inside the clouds itself. He tried to tap that with a kite and a wire. Lucky for him, lightning refused to strike his kite, but he is generally still credited as the first person who defined electricity the right way. So yes, something flows through a wire. It can go in at the one end and come out at the other. After Benjamin Franklin, things got stuck for 1/8 of a MILLENIUM, before someone else picked up the search for this 'something'.

Here comes George Johnstone Stoney, and finds that out all by himself. Imagine hic scientific surroundings. He was a scientist and a professor. All other scientists he saif, were wrong. He came to the conclusion, there must be particles smaller than the smallest known. Please stand still with this saying of him. Even today, we regulary here this. But he was the first to say it. He found out, these particles we later called an 'electron' have not only a mass, but also a charge. He could not prove it, but it was like said, a model, and he had an estimation of the charge. The number he came up with, was a factor 16 too low. This was such a weird situation. They had already batteries, telephones, and even radio transmissio. But what 'magic' makes it work? Well, electricity, they said. But what is that? Nobody had the faintest idea. All books were full of nonsense.

In this light you need to see the brilliancy of this discovery, because like everybody, he was initially put on the wrong track for decades, by the science of those days. That makes his discovery so remarkable.

George Johnstone Stoney.... what a GENIUS that was!

Even today we call it 'current'.

Even today we say, current flows through a wire. That is a before-Stoney expression, but we never got rid if it. Look at a river, what flows there? There is a current of water, which is the right expression. There is not just 'current' flowing. That would be the wrong expression, because WATER is flowing. Not, CURRENT is flowing. But this wrong wording comes from the fact they had no idea about what it was. I do have to say however, the analogy of water models and electrical models has always been very good. This even worked before they knew whet electricity really is..

Since 1873 we know, what it is that flows. They are electrons. Stoney even estimated their charge with only a factor 16 error. This is so brilliant, because at that momen he was the only person on earth, understanding this.

His findings were presented in a paper to a British scientific society in 1874. It was qualified 'interesting' by his fellow scientists. Soon others closed in on his theory, which should be no surprise, because many things could be explained a lot better with it.

This s kicked aside some other (wromg) views on it, but for the rest there was no practical application. scientists for the next quarter of a century (Yes!!!) regarded this discovery not very important.

More experiments by others

The tube itself is at low vacuum, and gas filled, and the gas is non-visible lighting, so the phosphorous layer stays dark except for the spot where electrons hit. The gas pressure (or molecule density) is low enough to allow electrons to travel along the vacuum, without hitting too much gas atoms. Yet if one is hit, it gets ionized, and it falls apart in the positive ion and the negative electron . The positive ion travels to the negative cathode. As it hit the cathode with great energy, this releases new electrons, and a chain reaction begins if the cathode to anode voltage is high enough. So it 'fires' at a certain voltage. Through a small slot hole, a fraction of the electrons peep out with moderate speed. They would return to Anode1, as they are negatively charged, but the acceleration anode has an much higher voltage, and it wins. At the slot of the Acceleration anode, the electrons come out with very high speed. These electrons hit the phosphorous layer, and it lights up.

Then came Joseph J. Thomson

In 1897, Joseph J. Thomson presented a practical proof of George Stoney's prediction, using the original cathode ray tube as pictured above. And right after he discovered relativity, when Einstein was still working as a clerk in the patent office. Looking at a piece of history... well this sure is one. If you think Fleming and von Lieben invented the electron tube, it means you think this cathode ray tube is not an electron tube.

Working with electrons may seem something logical today, but you need to see, this was in a time, where they only knew something flows from 'plus' to 'minus'. With that knowledge, which was even wrong, because electrons flow from minus to plus. Yet that didn't bother him, to prove electrons exist. He was able to determine the ratio between mass and charge of an electron. At first he deflected the bream electrically and then bring it back to the center by adding magnetic deflection. From this results a ratio as a plain number, which he can determine very precise. Of course this ratio included all the variables of his set up, like the number of coil windings and all kind of things. However it gave him a number.

As a second step, he increased the acceleration anode voltage by a certain factor, and in order to get the beam in the center again, that required another factor. Now that other factor can be derived from the first, if you know the change in anode voltage. Just results were not as he expected. The conclusion of this was, the ratio of mass to charge had increased. Just what caused it, was unknown. Now this was for the first time a scientist saw this, and even came up with an explanation, and an experimental formula. He said the change of mass, is causes by absorption of the electrical energy. Thus, presenting a relation between mass and energy. In the end he came up an experimental formula. E=3/4Mv². Three years later, In 1900, a French mathematics genius, Henri Poincaré, could prove and correct Thomson's formula, it had to be E= Mv². The relation between mass and speed, was discovered before and without Einstein.