MacTutor
Oliver Heaviside
Times obituary
ELECTRIC WAVE THEORY.
A mathematical thinker whose work long failed to secure the recognition its brilliance deserved is removed by the death of Mr. Oliver Heaviside, F.R.S., which is announced on another page. Born in London on May 13, 1850,
Mr. Heaviside was employed for a few years by the Great Northern Telegraph Company at Newcastle-on-Tyne, but after 1874 he lived in retirement in Devonshire, where he devoted himself to studying and interpreting Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic radiation and to showing how it can be applied to solving the problems of practical telegraphy and telephony, whether with or without wires. In particular, long-distance telephony owes much to his labors. In a long line, the electric waves that represent sound waves set up by a speaker in the transmitter are of different lengths and do not all travel at the same speed; as a consequence, the waveform is distorted in its progress, and the sounds it gives rise to in the receiver on arrival may not be an intelligible representation of those produced in the transmitter.
The remedy to which Heaviside was led was increasing the self-induction of the line. On the theory long cherished by officials of the British Post Office, however, self-induction was harmful to the clarity of transmission and therefore to be avoided and minimized, and accordingly they would not listen to him. But working on the principles he onunciated, Professor M. I. Pupin, in America, just at the end of last century, demonstrated the advantage of increasing self-induction by introducing loading coils at intervals along the line, and thereafter the method was adopted extensively in the United States and Germany, and also by the National Telephone Company in this country. Now many of the submarine telephone cables under the English Channel are loaded, as are thousands of miles of underground cables and the aerial telephone line 3,400 miles long between New York and San Francisco.
In the early days of wireless telegraphy, when skeptics were denying the possibilities of electric waves traveling over the mountain of water 150 miles high that lies between England and America, Heaviside maintained, again on the basis of Maxwell's theory, that since seawater has sufficient conductivity to make it behave as a conductor of the electric waves, they would accommodate themselves to the surface of the sea in the same way as they follow a metallic wire. He further pointed out the probability that in the higher regions of the air there exists a permanently ionized layer which, being as good a conductor as seawater, would act as an upper guide to the electric waves. Reasons have since been added to explain the formation and maintenance of this "Heaviside layer," as it has been called.
Heaviside, who was elected a Follower of the Royal Society in 1891, found difficulty in getting some of his writings published, but his earlier scientific contributions were collected in two volumes of "Electrical Papers" (1892), and his later work is to be found in three volumes on "Electromagnetic Theory," published in 1898, 1899, and 1912, and reprinted in 1922. He was a Faraday Medalist of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, an honorary Ph.D. of Göttingen, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
___________________________________________________
OLIVER HEAVISIDE CENTENARY
PIONEER OF ELECTRICAL WAVE RESEARCH
Oliver Heaviside, mathematical genius and a pioneer of electrical communication, was born 100 years ago, and this afternoon distinguished scientists and engineers will honor his memory at a centenary celebration arranged by the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
The occasion will bring together, under the chairmanship of Professor E. B. Moullin (President of the I.E.E.), who will be supported by Sir Robert Robinson, O.M. (President of the Royal Society), some who knew Heaviside personally; but all assembled today will pay tribute to the man whose theoretical research laid the foundations of electrical wave propagation soundly on the experimental methods of Faraday and the scientific principles enunciated by Maxwell.
Besides devoting most of his life to research into electromagnetism, Heaviside also gave his mind to such problems as the age of the Earth, thermoelectricity, and the field of movement of electrons; Heaviside was, in fact, among the first to discuss the increase in mass of a moving charge when its speed becomes very great. Thus, his influence extends to the theory of cyclotrons, synchrotrons, and other particle accelerators of this atomic age.
Telephony Theory
His outstanding contribution to telephony was the placing of the mathematical theory of propagation of the telephone current on wires and cables on a solid and accurate basis. The use of "loading," or the addition of inductance to cables, whereby the quality of speech over long distances by land or under the sea was enormously improved, earned him the highest praise.
Heaviside was also the first to solve the problem of the high-frequency behavior of the concentric main, or, as it is called today, coaxial cable. Recently, the coaxial cable problem has become one of great practical importance because of the ever-increasing need for more ambitious multi-channel telephone circuits and the demands made by television programs.
This London-born man, who made little money from his epoch-making inventions and lived in relative poverty and self-chosen seclusion, was past middle age before the scientific and practical world applauded him. But it was not until years after his death that the man-in-the-street became familiar with the name of Heaviside and the importance of his "layer" to broadcasting and radio communications generally
Sir George Lee, who will speak today on "Oliver Heaviside the Man," has expressed the view that there are probably still many ideas enunciated by Heaviside which have not yet found a place in practical electrical applications. Support for this view is also given in a contribution ("Some Unpublished Notes of Oliver Heaviside") by Mr. H. J. Josephs, who will describe a reconstruction from these notes of Heaviside's projected, but unpublished, fourth volume of his Electromagnetic Theory.
ELECTRIC WAVE THEORY.
A mathematical thinker whose work long failed to secure the recognition its brilliance deserved is removed by the death of Mr. Oliver Heaviside, F.R.S., which is announced on another page. Born in London on May 13, 1850,
Mr. Heaviside was employed for a few years by the Great Northern Telegraph Company at Newcastle-on-Tyne, but after 1874 he lived in retirement in Devonshire, where he devoted himself to studying and interpreting Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic radiation and to showing how it can be applied to solving the problems of practical telegraphy and telephony, whether with or without wires. In particular, long-distance telephony owes much to his labors. In a long line, the electric waves that represent sound waves set up by a speaker in the transmitter are of different lengths and do not all travel at the same speed; as a consequence, the waveform is distorted in its progress, and the sounds it gives rise to in the receiver on arrival may not be an intelligible representation of those produced in the transmitter.
The remedy to which Heaviside was led was increasing the self-induction of the line. On the theory long cherished by officials of the British Post Office, however, self-induction was harmful to the clarity of transmission and therefore to be avoided and minimized, and accordingly they would not listen to him. But working on the principles he onunciated, Professor M. I. Pupin, in America, just at the end of last century, demonstrated the advantage of increasing self-induction by introducing loading coils at intervals along the line, and thereafter the method was adopted extensively in the United States and Germany, and also by the National Telephone Company in this country. Now many of the submarine telephone cables under the English Channel are loaded, as are thousands of miles of underground cables and the aerial telephone line 3,400 miles long between New York and San Francisco.
In the early days of wireless telegraphy, when skeptics were denying the possibilities of electric waves traveling over the mountain of water 150 miles high that lies between England and America, Heaviside maintained, again on the basis of Maxwell's theory, that since seawater has sufficient conductivity to make it behave as a conductor of the electric waves, they would accommodate themselves to the surface of the sea in the same way as they follow a metallic wire. He further pointed out the probability that in the higher regions of the air there exists a permanently ionized layer which, being as good a conductor as seawater, would act as an upper guide to the electric waves. Reasons have since been added to explain the formation and maintenance of this "Heaviside layer," as it has been called.
Heaviside, who was elected a Follower of the Royal Society in 1891, found difficulty in getting some of his writings published, but his earlier scientific contributions were collected in two volumes of "Electrical Papers" (1892), and his later work is to be found in three volumes on "Electromagnetic Theory," published in 1898, 1899, and 1912, and reprinted in 1922. He was a Faraday Medalist of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, an honorary Ph.D. of Göttingen, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
___________________________________________________
OLIVER HEAVISIDE CENTENARY
PIONEER OF ELECTRICAL WAVE RESEARCH
Oliver Heaviside, mathematical genius and a pioneer of electrical communication, was born 100 years ago, and this afternoon distinguished scientists and engineers will honor his memory at a centenary celebration arranged by the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
The occasion will bring together, under the chairmanship of Professor E. B. Moullin (President of the I.E.E.), who will be supported by Sir Robert Robinson, O.M. (President of the Royal Society), some who knew Heaviside personally; but all assembled today will pay tribute to the man whose theoretical research laid the foundations of electrical wave propagation soundly on the experimental methods of Faraday and the scientific principles enunciated by Maxwell.
Besides devoting most of his life to research into electromagnetism, Heaviside also gave his mind to such problems as the age of the Earth, thermoelectricity, and the field of movement of electrons; Heaviside was, in fact, among the first to discuss the increase in mass of a moving charge when its speed becomes very great. Thus, his influence extends to the theory of cyclotrons, synchrotrons, and other particle accelerators of this atomic age.
Telephony Theory
His outstanding contribution to telephony was the placing of the mathematical theory of propagation of the telephone current on wires and cables on a solid and accurate basis. The use of "loading," or the addition of inductance to cables, whereby the quality of speech over long distances by land or under the sea was enormously improved, earned him the highest praise.
Heaviside was also the first to solve the problem of the high-frequency behavior of the concentric main, or, as it is called today, coaxial cable. Recently, the coaxial cable problem has become one of great practical importance because of the ever-increasing need for more ambitious multi-channel telephone circuits and the demands made by television programs.
This London-born man, who made little money from his epoch-making inventions and lived in relative poverty and self-chosen seclusion, was past middle age before the scientific and practical world applauded him. But it was not until years after his death that the man-in-the-street became familiar with the name of Heaviside and the importance of his "layer" to broadcasting and radio communications generally
Sir George Lee, who will speak today on "Oliver Heaviside the Man," has expressed the view that there are probably still many ideas enunciated by Heaviside which have not yet found a place in practical electrical applications. Support for this view is also given in a contribution ("Some Unpublished Notes of Oliver Heaviside") by Mr. H. J. Josephs, who will describe a reconstruction from these notes of Heaviside's projected, but unpublished, fourth volume of his Electromagnetic Theory.
