The fact that a Lorentz force in a reference frame 1 can become a Coulomb force in another reference frame 2 has always astonished me, especially because the velocities involved are really small.
I wonder: who was the first to discuss this peculiar interpretation (or effect) of Lorentz transformations of the EM-field?
In this Wikipedia article a letter from Einstein is mentioned in which he writes:
What led me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field.
However, this letter dates from 1953. I wonder whether Einstein really discussed this in his earlier articles? Did he not mainly discuss the effects in space-time-coordinates of an invariant and finite speed of light? Further I noted that a publication by E. Purcell from 1965 is often referenced.
Are there also publications known from the beginning of the 20th century? So, not publications that deal with Lorentz-transformations of the EM-field in general, but that specifically discuss changes in charge distiributions due to length contraction etc.
