As with piezoelectric and electrostrictive ceramic work before it, investigations into electrostrictive polymers treated Maxwell stress as a secondary factor that needed to be subtracted out from the more important electrostrictive measurements rather than a potentially powerful actuation mode worth pursuing in itself. Nonetheless, early electrostrictive polymer work was important in the evolution of dielectric elastomers in that it showed the potential of electroactive polymers beyond piezoelectric polymer materials such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), and it illustrated some of the important issues in electrode compliance that arise in high strain actuator materials.