The unit name honours
James Clerk Maxwell,[2] who presented a unified theory of
electromagnetism. The maxwell was recommended as a CGS unit at the
International Electrical Congress held in 1900 at Paris.[3] This practical unit was previously called a line,[4] reflecting
Faraday's conception of the magnetic field as curved lines of magnetic force,[5] which he designated as line of magnetic induction.[4]Kiloline (103 line) and megaline (106 line) were sometimes used because 1 line was very small relative to the phenomena that it was used to measure.[5]
The maxwell was affirmed again unanimously as the unit name for magnetic flux at the Plenary Meeting of the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in July 1930 at Oslo.[6] In 1933, the Electric and Magnetic Magnitudes and Units committee of the IEC recommended to adopt the metre–kilogram–second (
MKS) system (
Giorgi system), and the name
weber was proposed for the practical unit of magnetic flux (Φ), subject to approval of various national committees, which was achieved in 1935.[7] The weber was thus adopted as a practical unit of magnetic flux by the IEC.
^"as late as 1936 a subcommittee of the IEC [
International Electrotechnical Commission] proposed the names 'maxwell', 'gauss' and 'oersted' for the cgs electromagnetic units of flux, induction and magnetic field strength, respectively." — Roche, John James; The Mathematics of Measurement: A Critical History, The Athlone Press, London, 1998,
ISBN0-485-11473-9, page 184 and Roche, John James;
"B and H, the intensity vectors of magnetism: A new approach to resolving a century-old controversy", American Journal of Physics, vol. 68, no. 5, 2000, doi: 10.1119/1.19459, p. 438; in both cases giving the reference as Egidi, Claudio; editor; Giovanni Giorgi and his Contribution to Electrical Metrology: Proceedings of the meeting held in Turin (Italy) on 21 and 22, September 1988, Politecnico di Torino, Turin (IT), 1990,
ISBN978-8885259003, pp. 53–56
^"Séance de clôture". Congrès international d'électricité (in French). Paris: Gauthier-Villars. 1901. p. 354.
^
abGyllenbok, Jan (2018).
"line". Encyclopaedia of Historical Metrology, Weights, and Measures, Volume 1. Birkhäuser. p. 141.
ISBN9783319575988. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
^
abKlein, Herbert Arthur (1988) [1974]. The science of measurement: A historical survey. Dover. p. 481.