I was motivated to read Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity after viewing the NOVA presentation "Einstein Revealed". This presentation included several concepts such as: the dilation of time, the contraction of space, as functions of velocity; and, the mass of sunlight radiation striking the Earth surface. As examples, clocks run slower at the equator than clocks located at the Earth poles, an object traveling at 90% the speed of light contracts to 44% of its length as viewed by an observer at rest and at a right angle to the direction of motion-of the object; and, about 4.5 pounds of sunlight per second impact Earth, energy mass equivalent Einstein's E=mc(2) Prior to the NOVA presentation, I was only superficially aware of these concepts, but afterward resolved to: obtain a copy of Einstein's 1905 paper published in the Annalen der Physik 1905. At my local public library, a synchronous event occurred in that the first book I selected from the many biographies oil Einstein stored on the shelf was Authur I. Miller's; 1981 "Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity" and an appendix of Miller's translation German to English of Einstein's 1905 pamphlet of 24 pages. Prior to reading Dr. Miller's translation, I had assumed that Einstein's mathematics would be beyond my capability. Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that Einstein's paper presented the development of special relativity in very lucid and comprehensible terms. The scope of the following summary of the bottom-line message, today's so called news sound-byte, of Einstein's Special Relativity is limited to the Kinematical part I which deals with the dilatation of time or slowing down of moving clocks and the contraction of length of objects moving-in-space, relative to an observer at a resting reference point. Lastly, Einstein's relativity is applied to illustrate current energy conversion engineering applications.
