et’s start with Einstein’s own words in his Autobiographical Notes in the book “Albert

Einstein Philosopher Scientist.” At age 16 Einstein says he came upon a paradox which he
describes as follows:

“If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should
observe such a beam of light as an electromagnetic field at rest though spatially oscillating.
There seems to be no such thing, however, neither on the basis of experience nor according
to Maxwell's equations. From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that,
judged from the standpoint of such an observer, everything would have to happen according
to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest. For how should
the first observer know or be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion?
One sees in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained."

To see what Einstein meant by such a stationary beam of light violating Maxwell’s
equations???, consider a stationary wave form ( as seen by Einstein’s speedy observer),

Ten years later, Einstein published a paper “On the electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,”
(English translation) which resolved the paradox of the 16 year old Einstein by producing
the Special Theory of Relativity. According to Special Relativity, Maxwell’s equations hold.
unaltered in every inertial reference frame (as do all laws of nature) and therefore, since
Maxwell’s equations predict that the vacuum speed of light is always c in such a frame,
Einstein’s speedy observer can’t exist.

One of the results of Special Relativity is that disturbances can’t be transmitted from one
location to another instantaneously, i.e., created here and felt there simultaneously.
However, Newtonian gravitation was supposed to do exactly that. According to Newton, if
we could wiggle the Earth, the effect on the Moon would occur immediately. It was clear to
Einstein that Newton’s law of gravity is incompatible with Special Relativity. So, Einstein
began searching for a theory of gravitation which would be compatible with Special
Relativity.

Einstein’s quest for a theory of gravitation to replace Newton’s theory involved many
erroneous paths over a ten year period before he developed the General Theory of Relativity.
A mathematician friend and former classmate, Marcel Grossmann, convinced Einstein that
he needed to learn Riemannian geometry, and tensor analysis. At that time it was called
the absolute differential calculus, because the subject had the same mathematical form in all
coordinate systems.
Einstein believed in the principle of general covariance, that it should be possible to write
the laws of physics in the same form in all coordinate systems, even accelerating or rotating
coordinates. Therefore, tensor analysis provided just the mathematics he needed to achieve
form invariance of physical laws. Another principle Einstein used to develop the General
Theory is the principle of equivalence. This principle states that a uniform gravitational field
is equivalent to a uniformly acceleration frame of reference. Another way to formulate the
principle of equivalence is that a freely falling non-rotating frame of reference is equivalent
to an inertial frame, i.e., a frame in which there is no gravitational field.

There is a story, certainly a myth, that after seeing a painter fall off a scaffold, Einstein
rushed over and asked the painter if he felt a force of gravity as he was falling!

As it turned out, Einstein’s new theory of gravitation was much larger in scope than Special
Relativity, including the latter as a special case, and also as a local approximation. The
special case is no gravitation, which is a “flat” spacetime. The sense in which General
Relativity includes Special Relativity as a local approximation, is that in a small region of
spacetime coordinates can be chosen which approximate an inertial frame.