 Although the spatial and temporal invariance of mechanical laws was known and used for a long time in physics, and the group of the global spacetime symmetries for electrodynamics was completely derived by H. Poincaré  [7]  before Einstein’s famous 1905 paper setting out his special theory of relativity, it was not until this work by Einstein that the status of symmetries with respect to the laws was reversed. E. P. Wigner (1967, p. 5) writes that “the significance and general validity of these principles were recognized, however, only by Einstein”, and that Einstein’s work on special relativity marks “the reversal of a trend: until then, the principles of invariance were derived from the laws of motion … It is now natural for us to derive the laws of nature and to test their validity by means of the laws of invariance, rather than to derive the laws of invariance from what we believe to be the laws of nature”. In postulating the universality of the global continuous spacetime symmetries, Einstein’s construction of his special theory of relativity represents the first turning point in the application of symmetry to twentieth-century  physics.[8]