At the time, physicists were prejudiced to believe in a perfectly static universe without beginning or end.

The difficulty is that in an infinite static universe nearly every line of sight would end on the surface of a star.

In a static universe, the both the velocity and acceleration between galaxies needs to be 0.

Newton, and others, should have realized that a static universe would soon start to contract under the influence of gravity.

Yet so strong was the belief in a static universe that it persisted into the early twentieth century.

The joke, of course, is that Einstein did not need a static universe to have a Machian one.

It changed our world view, even that of Albert Einstein, who believed in a static universe.

He was convinced of his own belief in a static infinite eternal flat universe.

At the time, Einstein believed in a static universe, but found that his original formulation of the theory did not permit it.

When Einstein formulated general relativity, he and his contemporaries believed in a static universe.