This chapter traces the genesis of Newtonian gravitation from attempts by the early Greeks and others to understand the observed motion of matter in the Universe, up to the seventeenth century. It shows how the experimental results of Galileo, Brahe and Kepler led Newton to enunciate a series of physical laws of motion for material particles and a universal law of gravitational interaction between them. It also discusses the critical experimental work made by Young in 1801 following the development of the spectroscope and diffraction grating, and the seminal observations of the speed of light in vacuo made by Römer and subsequently refined by Fizeau in 1849. These experiments on light beams, and experiments on electric and magnetic phenomena made by Ampère, Coulomb and Faraday, led Maxwell to the prediction that the observed behaviour of light was one aspect of all electromagnetic phenomena. We argue in this chapter that these developments were some of the key elements that led Einstein to his Special Theory of Relativity and to his assertion that Newtonian gravitation and Newton’s Laws of Motion were particular approximations in his General Theory of Relativity. This chapter also emphasises the need for “dimensional coherence” when discussing phenomena in the Einstein-Maxwell paradigm and is developed in subsequent chapters in the context of the modern SI system of units.