Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
The literature about the Lorentz transformation is already so wide that some justification is needed for presenting even a small paper on the subject. It is possible to deduce the transformation from essentially different sets of relevant assumptions. The standard text-books on relativity throw little light on this question, which is probably due to the circumstances in which the Lorentz transformation first came into the field. Probably the question is important enough for the following considerations to be worthy of notice.