this is part of it
Lightning has struck the rails on our railway embankment at two places A and B far distant from each other. I make the additional assertion that these two lightning flashes occurred simultaneously. If I ask you wheter there is sense in this statement, you will answer my question with a decided "yes." But if I now approach you with the reuqurest to explain to me the sense of the statement more precisely, you find taht after some consideration that the answer to this question is not so easy as it appears at first sight.
After some time perhaps in the following answer would occur to you: "The significance of the statement is clear in itself and needs no further explanation; of course if would require some consideration if I were to commissioned to determine by observations whether in the acutal case the two events took place simultaneously or not." I cannot be satisfied with this answer for the following reason. Supposing that as ar esult of ingenious considerations an able meteorologist were to discover that the lightning must always strike the places A and B simultaneously, then we should be faced with tht ask of testing wheter or not this theoretical result is in accordance with the reality. We encounter the same difficulty with all physical statements in which the conception simultaeous" plays a part. The concept does not exist for the physicist until he has the possibility of discovering whether or not it is fulfilled in an actual case. We thus reqire a definition of simultaneity such tat this definition supplies us with the method by means of which, in the present case, he can decide by experiment whether or not both the lightning strokes occurd simultaneously. As long as this requirement is not satisifed, I will allow myself to be deceived as a physicist (and of course the same applies if I am not a physicist), when I imagine that I am able to attach a meaning to the statement of simultaneity. I would ask the reader not to proceed farther until he is fully convinced on this point.)
After thinking the matter over for some tie you then offer the following suggestion with which to test simultaneity. By measuring along the rails, the connecting line AB should be measured up and an observer placed at the mid-point M of the distance AB. This observer should be supplied with an arrangement (e.g., two mirros inclined at 90°) which allows him visually to observe both places A and B at the same time. If the observer perceived the two flashes of lightning at the same time, then they are simultaneous.
I am very pleased with this suggestion, but for all that I cannot regard the matter as quite settled, because I feel constrained to raise the following objection: "Your definition wold certainly be right, if only I knew that the light by means of which the observer at M perceives the lightning flashes travels along the length A -> M with the same velocity as along the lenght B 0> M. But an examination of this suppostion would only be possible if we already had at our disposal the means of measuring time. It would thus appear as though we were not moving here in a logical circle."
After futher consideration you cast a somewhat disdainful glace at me - and rightly so - and you delare: "I maintain my previous definition nevertheless, because in reality it assumes absolutely nothing about light. There is only one demand to be made of the definition of simultaneity, namely, that in every real case it must supply us with an empirical decision as to wheter or not the conception that has to be defined is fulfilled. That my definition satisfies this demand is indesputable. that light requires the same time to traverse the path A -> M as for the path B 0> M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physial neature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own free will inorder to arrive at adefintion of simultaneity."
It is clear that this definitiion can be used to give an exact mening ont only to two events, but to as many events as we care to choose, and independently of the positions of the scenes of the events with respect to the body of reference (here the railway embankment). We are thus led also to a definition of "time" in physics. For this purpose we suppose that clocks of identical construction are placed at the points A,B and C of the railway line (coordinate system), and that they are set in such a manner that the positions of their pointers re simultaneously (in the above sense) the same. Under these conditions we understand by the "time" of an event the reading (position of the hands) of that one of these clocks which is in the immediate vicinity (in space) of the event. In this manner a time-value is associated with every event which is essentially capable of observation)
This stipulation contains a further physical hypothesis, the validity of which will hardly be doubted without empirical evidence to the congtrary. It has been assumed that all these clocks go at the sme rate if they are of identical construction. State more exactly: When two clocks arranged at rest in different places of a reference body are set in such a manner that a particular position of the pointers of the one clock is simultaneous (in the above sense) with the same position of the pointers of the other clock, then identical "settings" are always simultaneous (in the sense of the above definition).
Up to now our considerations have been referred to a particular body of refernce, which we have styled a "railway embarkment." We suppose a very long train travelling along the rails with constant velocity v and in the direction indicated in Figure 1. People traveling in this train will with advantage use the train as a rigid reference-body (coordinate system); they regard all events in reference to the train.