http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
Albert Einstein 1912 (in letters to Ehrenfest): "I was not annoyed in
the least by your article. On the contrary. Such considerations are
quite familiar to me from the pre-relativistic time. I certainly knew
that the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is
something quite independent of the relativity postulate; and I
considered what would be more probable, the principle of the constancy
of c, as was demanded by Maxwell's equations, or the constancy of c,
exclusively for an observer sitting at the light source. (...) I
believe that there are quite simple experiments to test Ritz'
conception, which, incidentally, was also mine before rel. theory."

The problem is that Maxwell's equations demanded that the speed of
light be VARIABLE - it varied with the speed of the observer:

http://culturesciencesphysique.ens-l..._CSP_relat.xml
Gabrielle Bonnet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon: "Les équations de
Maxwell font en particulier intervenir une constante, c, qui est la
vitesse de la lumière dans le vide. Par un changement de référentiel
classique, si c est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide dans un
premier référentiel, et si on se place désormais dans un nouveau
référentiel en translation par rapport au premier à la vitesse
constante v, la lumière devrait désormais aller à la vitesse c-v si
elle se déplace dans la direction et le sens de v, et à la vitesse c+v
si elle se déplace dans le sens contraire."

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-.../dp/0553380168
Stephen Hawking: "Maxwell's theory predicted that radio or light waves
should travel at a certain fixed speed. But Newton's theory had got
rid of the idea of absolute rest, so if light was supposed to travel
at a fixed speed, one would have to say what that fixed speed was to
be measured relative to. It was therefore suggested that there was a
substance called the "ether" that was present everywhere, even in
"empty" space. Light waves should travel through the ether as sound
waves travel through air, and their speed should therefore be relative
to the ether. Different observers, moving relative to the ether, would
see light coming toward them at different speeds, but light's speed
relative to the ether would remain fixed."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Chasing.pdf
John Norton: "Finally, in an apparent eagerness to provide a seamless
account, an author may end up misstating the physics. Kaku (2004, p.
45) relates how Einstein found that his aversion to frozen light was
vindicated when he later learned Maxwell's theory:
Kaku: "When Einstein finally learned Maxwell's equations, he could
answer the question that was continually on his mind. As he suspected,
he found that there were no solutions of Maxwell's equations in which
light was frozen in time. But then he discovered more. To his
surprise, he found that in Maxwell's theory, light beams always
traveled at the same velocity, no matter how fast you moved."
This is supposedly what Einstein learned as a student at the Zurich
Polytechnic, where he completed his studies in 1900, well before the
formulation of the special theory of relativity. Yet the results
described are precisely what is not to be found in the ether based
Maxwell theory Einstein would then have learned. That theory allows
light to slow and be frozen in the frame of reference of a
sufficiently rapidly moving observer."

Pentcho Valev