The shoulders of the giants on which we stand

Maxwell´s equations did not first appear in the nicely packaged form we use today. In fact, for a full 23 years after Maxwell introduced his equations and pointed out that they predicted the speed of light based solely on electrostatic and magnetostatic constants, Maxwell´s equations were widely ignored. We describe the process by which Maxwell´s equations came to be accepted, culminating with the publication of the experiments of Heinrich Hertz in 1888.