While it was recognized early in the 18th century that finding absolute theories of electrostatic and magnetic force akin to Newton's principles of motion would be an important achievement, none were forthcoming. This impossibility only slowly disappeared as experimental practice became more widespread and more refined in the early years of the 19th century in places such as the newly established Royal Institution in London. Meanwhile, the analytical methods of rational mechanics began to be applied to experimental phenomena, most influentially with the French mathematician Joseph Fourier 's analytical treatment of the flow of heat, as published in 1822. Joseph Priestley proposed an electrical inverse-square law in 1767, and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb introduced the inverse-square law of electrostatics in 1798.