Aether doesn't exist you morons. That was what people thought when Maxwell derived the equation of the propagation of light from Maxwell equations. He arrived at a velocity "c", which was thought as the propagation velocity of electromagnetic field relative to this "aether". I don't know how you relate this to special relativity, but one of the postulates is that there is no preferred reference frame. That was also the conclusion Michelson and Morley arrived at their famous experiment in 1887 (or so, can't remember the exact date now). Anyways, after Lorentz had derived the transformations laws between frames in order to include the Maxewll equation he found that objects contract in the direction of movement. It was sugested the aether created a force causing this contraction. In 1905 Einstein rejected Lorentz's idea by considering the contraction as a local spacetime effect and not of the objects themselves. This is how it happened.