In 1875, four years before Albert Einstein was born, Samuel Tolver Preston published an amazing book entitled "Physics of the Ether". In it he set down the now famous formula E = mc2 and thoroughly explained its implications. Preston expressly stated that matter contains a store of energy which if fully utilized could create atomic bombs and generate atomic energy. He knew that atomic energy would someday replace coal. He also described superconductivity and asserted that gravity propagates at light speed. Long before Einstein, Preston completely relativized unipolar induction. His complete works on these revolutionary concepts are republished along with commentary and analysis by Christopher Jon Bjerknes who was the first historian of Physics to discover the fact that Preston had anticipated Einstein by many decades and had a better understanding of E = mc2 than Einstein. Albert Einstein mistakenly believed that atomic bombs and atomic energy were impossible to produce.