Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 2.djvu/211

545.] units for the measurement of electrical quantities is one of the most important steps in the progress of the science. Having already, in conjunction with Gauss, placed the measurement of magnetic quantities in the first rank of methods of precision, Weber proceeded in his Electrodynamic Measurements not only to lay down sound principles for fixing the units to be employed, but to make de terminations of particular electrical quantities in terms of these units, with a degree of accuracy previously unattempted. Both the electromagnetic and the electrostatic systems of units owe their development and practical application to these researches.

Weber has also formed a general theory of electric action from which he deduces both electrostatic and electromagnetic force, and also the induction of electric currents. We shall consider this theory, with some of its more recent developments, in a separate chapter. See Art. 846.