Claim: The experiments of Rayleigh and Brace were aimed to show whether length contraction leads to birefringence or not, and later on, the results were proven to be negative, which was of great importance for the development of the Lorentz transformation,  a linear transformation.
Evidence: The experiments of Rayleigh and Brace (1902, 1904) were aimed to show whether length contraction leads to birefringence or not. The results were negative, which was of great importance for the development of the Lorentz transformation and consequently of the theory of relativity. In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of linear transformations from a coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity relative to the former.