A Short Timeline for Early Electromagnetic Theory

  The introduction to electromagnetic theory usually involves mathematical statements of the physical laws governing the relations between forces, charges and their motion and the more abstract fields. Here are some Wikipedia articles dealing with some of the more important ones.

1785 Coulomb's law

1813 Gauss' Law

1820 Biot-Savart law

1820 Oersted's law

1823 Ampere's force law

1831 Faraday's law of induction

1855 Ampere's circuital law (Maxwell)

In the twenty years between 1855 and 1873 Maxwell wrote a number of works on electricity and magnetism attempting to develop mathematically Faraday's impressionistic lines of force approach to the subject.

1855 Maxwell, On Faraday's Lines of Force

1861 Maxwell, On Physical Lines of Force

1865 Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field

1873 Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity & Magnetism Vol 1, Vol 2

Part III of A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field deals with the General Equations of the Electromagnetic Field in which Maxwell introduces such concepts as "electromotive force," "electromagnetic momentum," "magnetic force" and "electromotive force in a circuit." These deal with force fields rather than electric and magnetic fields and his approach appears to be less abstract than our modern theory of the subject. One can compare Maxwell's formulas with those in modern notation.