On Einstein's unified field theory

Abstract

In a recent paper Prof. A. Einstein has proposed equations determining a field containing both gravitational and electromagnetic phenomena, the underlying geometry being of a type which admits the possibility of giving any arbitrary vector in the field a displacement which conserves parallelism at a distance. The purpose of the present paper is to try and obtain light on the new theory by applying it to a special case in which an exact solution of the usual gravitational and electromagnetic equations of the relatively theory is known. In II we obtain this solution, that is to say, we determine a set of values of the g μv and ϕ μ which exactly satisfies the recognised relatively equations. It is found that this solution corresponds to an electrostatic field uniform in direction and nearly constant but with a slight exponential change of strength as we go along the field.