Dear Chris,
I regret not writing something for you about the
discovery of the Searle biography.
I am heavily committed to other work, but I must
give you the minimum, which I do now. You are welcome to edit it.
Please repeat
your request for the other thing you requested from me. I forget what it was.
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x6ch.pdf
Ivor
Catt 16 December 2016
The
Searle Biography of Oliver Heaviside.
My research into the interconnection of high speed
(1 nanosecond ) logic in Motorola Phoenix in the 1960s
led me to advances in electromagnetic theory which I have always regarded as
more important than “Catt Spiral” and the move towards massively parallel
computing (1). One nanosecond meant that the delay in interconnections would
now be longer than the delay through a logic gate, and we might have been
falling off the cliff into massive interference between logic signals. I came
up with the concept of “Energy Current” and published a major paper on
crosstalk. (2) We had to fully understand the crosstalk between logic signal
wires. Today, when computers have become so small, the problem has receded.
A decade later I gave up on what I decided was a
conservative industry opposed to innovation. I took to teaching remedial
English. My final fling would be a book guiding engineers on how to
interconnect high speed logic and other problems. The plan was demolished when
I found the mess electromagnetic theory was in. It resurfaced a decade later,
but lacking a simple introduction to em theory. (3)
One chapter would have to be electromagnetic theory,
so I went down to the IEE/IET library to find out what Faraday and Maxwell
knew. I would build up the engineer from their platform.
The librarian, Mrs. Goodship,
told me I must see the “Heaviside” library, and opened the door into the small
room with Heaviside’s books, covered in dust. Heaviside had disappeared from
the record, and the only thing I or anyone else knew about him was the
“Heaviside Layer”. Glancing through his five volumes, which I had not known to
exist, I came upon “Energy Current”. He had been there before me, a hundred
years before! I was sorry that I was not the first, but on the other hand glad
that I had pedigree.
To build up my career, I had to rebuild Heaviside as
a platform for myself. I would write about Heaviside; my friend the late Ivor Grattan-Guinness would write about Heaviside’s
mathematics, his Operational Calculus; and my late wife would write his
biography, there being no biography of Heaviside existing at the time.
We put adverts in the press asking for information
about Oliver Heaviside, and received a reply from the Reverend Timmins, the
nephew of G F C Searle, Heaviside’s best friend. On the centenary of
Heaviside’s death in 1950, H J Josephs and Searle had worked together to
develop the IEE centenary volume on OH. Searle told the IEE that to do the work
he needed a bed for his midday nap, and also a secretary. (4)
We visited Timmins, and he gave us a box of Heaviside
memorabilia which included Searle’s unpublished biography. Timmins told us that
Cambridge University Library and also the IEE had refused to come to see his
Heaviside box. Remember that by now Heaviside was regarded as insignificant.
Timmins said he planned to destroy the material next winter. In the end I, rather than my late wife,
sorted out the biography, manufactured and published it. (5)
The President of the IEE wrote to Heaviside saying
they were constituting the Faraday Medal in 1922
partly because they wanted to give the first to him, in recognition of the
massive work he had done on electromagnetic theory. Today in the IEE/IET I
found 100 photographs of the most important scientists in history hanging in the
stairs. I could not find Heaviside. In 2013 Sir Michael Pepper FRS, knighted
for services to physics, received the Faraday Medal. Unmentioned in any text
book for more than half of the 20th century, Heaviside receives
little mention today. (6)
Ivor
Catt 16 December 2016
1 http://www.ivorcatt.com/3ewk.htm
2
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x147.pdf
3
http://www.ivorcatt.org/digital-hardware-design.htm
4 http://teamat.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/2/61.extract Footnote 7