Talk:Ivor Catt

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Contents

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6.1 Question #2

[edit] Sir Clive Sinclair's filmed interview about Ivor Catt's invention of practical WSI

Sir Clive Sinclair: "Sir Clive Sinclair talks on wafer-scale integration 1987", YouTube [1]. Does anyone have the exact date of transmission of this film? 82.21.58.162 (talk) 18:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Health scare

I have just been notified by a kind email from Liba (Ivor's partner) that Ivor is in Watford general hospital. She did not give details, but it is a serious problem, so if anyone wants to send a "get well soon" card, that would be a nice idea. I will hopefully be able to visit Ivor later today (will not get into physics arguments!). - Nigel Cook, 14 Nov. 07 172.143.140.135 11:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Update: I took time off and visited at the hospital from 3-4.15 pm today, although I had to wait until 3.30pm to see Ivor Catt. Liba was there and gave some details. Ivor was admitted as an emergency case on 6 October and has been in intensive care at the hospital for about 6 weeks. He was in a coma for the first 3 days after breathing difficulties. He suffered pneumonia and has had a tracheometry so he cannot speak; he is currently on a ventilator and being fed fluids via intravenous drip. Apart from that, and some other infections he has picked up in hospital (which seems inevitable these days), he seemed fine, although was clearly in some discomfort from the need for the ventilator. He slept but had brief conscious spells with eyes open and alert. Liba told me that Ivor is more fully awake in the evenings. The staff at the intensive care unit were excellent, although apparently they cannot make a full diagnosis or give a prognosis yet (despite the 6 weeks of tests so far). Liba said that Ivor seems to have improved slightly, and so hopefully he will make a full recovery although at the present time his condition is still extremely serious although stable. From these few details it looks to me as if a full recovery will probably take several months, not just a few more weeks. - Nigel Cook 172.201.255.208 19:19, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Bm gub: You have vandalised the page by replacing facts from peer-reviewed publications with half-baked opinions, which don't reflect the facts. For example, you have falsely asserted that Ivor Catt grew in in Singapore, when he actually moved around the world as his father was transferred between RAF airbases, and this falsehood has been inserted because you haven't even bothered to check the facts.

Everything you write is ignorant lies or "errors". You're not revising the article, you're deleting all the referenced facts and replacing them with false drivel and personal insults, which are banned under Wiki rules anyway. Any changes you insert need references, and if you aren't expert in the subject of Catt (sadly cross-talk stuff is probably a long way from your PhD in electronic circuits), it isn't a good idea to delete the material you haven't heard of and replace it with personal insults and sneers about the person.

All the insults in your comment after the revert of your vandalism ignore the facts there on the page which you tried to delete. For example, key ideas you criticise were actually developed by Dr David Walton and Malcolm Davidson, and Catt was the activist trying to get discussion going inside the IEE and IEEE. Sometimes one of the censors of Catt pops up writing a letter to Electronics World or here on this Wiki page about Catt, claims he or she is a PhD expert or whatever, and then insists that Catt is self-praising himself and an egotist. That's no admissible really, it's contentless drivel which can claimed about many people. This is why the facts are more important than such opinions and insults, such as the fact that a lot of the work is not Catt's, and that his successful inventions built on the discoveries of others such as Heaviside, Dr Walton, Davidson, Mike S. Gibson, and several others.

The Wiki page is about the facts concerning Ivor Catt, not about your personal opinions or the fact - stressed in the original article - that his work is not mainstream. Your attacks on his work as being self publication are false since the science is actually the work of many others. If you have opinions, you are welcome to try to publish them somewhere more appropriate, such as in a journal if you can survive peer-rview. Then we can cite your wisdom here on Wikipedia!

Photocopier Photocopier 18:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Photocopier, your comments above are objectively in violation of WP:CIVIL. Please read Behavior that is unacceptable carefully and please pay particular attention to No personal attacks. Also, please carefully read What vandalism is not. Regards: Alfred Centauri 20:50, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Alfred: I'm making a response to vandalism, not an attack: many people's editing and referenced, carefully researched and checked information was deleted and replaced with some ill-informed opinions and insulting claims (with no supporting evidence whatsoever) about a "mainstream consensus" of authorities on Catt, which doesn't exist. There is no consensus because the only people in authority who comment on Catt make contradictory remarks: this is the opposite of a consensus. I was perfectly civil, I didn't call anybody a liar for making what are evidently hostile, personally insulting, misleading and possibly libellous false claims and unfounded assertions. However, the scale of the vandalism of the article was such that a civil, yet unequivocally worded, response seemed needed on this discussion page to explain that simply deleting a whole article and replacing it with some obvious fantasy based entirely on misunderstandings and complete ignorance (if not deliberate vandalism), was somewhat unhelpful. Photocopier 15:23, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Photocopier, no offense meant. I thought the Singapore thing was implied in the previous version, and I meant to just reword it into standard encyclopedia bio style ("John Doe was born in X on Jan 1 1901, and grew up in Y" rather than launching straight into childhood anecdotes. Thank you for correcting the facts. How is "Ivor Catt was born in XXX but grew up on RAF airbases around the world; he and his mother narrowly escaped the invasion of Singapore in 1942."? Please reword it to your satisfaction rather than reverting and accusing me of bad faith.

Next, after taking a deep breath: I know that the following is not your preferred version of the article, but please tell me which point is factually wrong in this shortened account:

Catt's views on electromagnetism Catt argues that much of mainstream electromagnetism is wrong: Catt does not admit the existence of electric charge as a fundamental entity and he claims that all charge is composed of trapped Heaviside energy current. He argues that capacitance and inductance are fictional, being artifacts of transmission-line effects in the devices; that displacement current is not needed to explain capacitor operation. As opposed to normal current (flow of charge), Catt uses energy current to describe most effects. Catt illustrates this with the Catt anomaly. When a step electromagnetic wave travels from left to right in a parallel twin-conductor transmission line, he asks, "Where does the charge on the bottom (return) conductor come from?" He does not answer that question, but states that simply asking the question proves that conventional electrodynamics must be false. The subtext of his argument here seems to be that charge from the conductors is not necessary for the transmission of EM waves in transmission lines. The electric field carrying the energy precedes and causes subsequent electron drift current, but the field is not itself charge, but rather Heaviside "energy current", light speed electromagnetic energy.

Catt's views on digital logic Catt has a long-standing dispute about "exclusive-or" in Boolean algebra. He has noted that "and", "or", "exclusive-or" (and their inverses) are the six functions out of the 16 possible functions of two Boolean inputs for which A op B is the same as B op A. Catt calls this "symmetric", and complains that Boolean algebra deals with "and" and "or" and ignores "ex-or". He appears to have been arguing this since his IC design days, when he apparently failed to convince his boss of the business case for having an EXOR function in the product range. (De Morgan's Laws state that a "positive-logic AND" is a "negative-logic OR" and vice versa.)

Seriously, what part of this is misrepresenting Catt's views? Most of it is verbatim from your preferred edit. Next, for the criticism section, please give some detail on my revision:

Current status of Catt's ideas

The view of Catt's ideas by mainstream physicists is that his earlier work on digital logic circuits is of value, but his later ideas about electromagnetism are incorrect. Because Catt's views have been expressed mainly in popular-press articles, self-published books, and on informal Internet forums, mainstream physicists view Catt's ideas, to the extent that they have heard of them, as pseudophysics. In particular, the fact that Catt's views are not expressed in compact mathematical form (Catt's view is that the use of mathematics in physics is "skillful manipulation of meaningless symbols") means that, in the conventional view, his work is out of the scope of conventional physics and cannot make reliable predictions to compare to experiments. Catt claims that there are some workers who are beginning to re-evaluate his ideas on the transmission-line representation of the capacitor in order to achieve better modelling of these components.

That looks pretty reality-based to me, Photocopier. It is a fact that Catt's views are expressed mainly on his webpages; that Electronics World and Wireless World were both an edited popular-electronics magazines, not peer-reviewed journals. It is a fact that Catt's views on the nature of electromagnetism are mostly ignored and rejected by the mainstream; Catt himself seems to complain about this, which seems to confirm it as a fact (even if it's a fact he doesn't like ... but "facts you don't like" are not to be excluded from Wikipedia; wikipedia is not advertising, is not a personal homepage.) Note, also, that the paragraph above does not disparage anything Catt may or may not say about circuit design, practical aspects of crosstalk, etc.. It simply reports the plain and simple fact that Catt is an outsider and that essentially all mainstream physicists disagree with him. Bm gub 14:23, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Bm gub: you say "please tell me which point is factually wrong in this shortened account: ... Catt does not admit the existence of electric charge as a fundamental entity and he claims that all charge is composed of trapped Heaviside energy current. He argues that capacitance and inductance are fictional, being artifacts of transmission-line effects in the devices; that displacement current is not needed to explain capacitor operation. As opposed to normal current (flow of charge), Catt uses energy current to describe most effects. Catt illustrates this with the Catt anomaly. When a step electromagnetic wave travels from left to right in a parallel twin-conductor transmission line, he asks, "Where does the charge on the bottom (return) conductor come from?" He does not answer that question, but states that simply asking the question proves that conventional electrodynamics must be false. The subtext of his argument here seems to be that charge from the conductors is not necessary for the transmission of EM waves in transmission lines. The electric field carrying the energy precedes and causes subsequent electron drift current, but the field is not itself charge, but rather Heaviside "energy current", light speed electromagnetic energy."

It's completely unsubstantiated opinion, similar to your false deduction that because Catt was in Singapore when the Japanese invaded, he must have been brought up in Singapore.

Sorry about the Singapore thing. That's the most easily fixed error in the world. Thank you for fixing it. Bm gub 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

You take lots of little bits out of context to make up a personal insult by misrepresenting the facts. First, look at Catt's page (taken from his major 1994 book, http://www.ivorcatt.com/1_3.htm and you will see the section "the electron" at the end concerning Catt's construction of an electron from energy current. Your claim that "Catt does not admit the existence of electric charge as a fundamental entity and he claims that all charge is composed of trapped Heaviside energy current" is false since charge is a property measurable only as fields. Nobody has collided electrons harder than 90 GeV or so, nobody knows what "charge" is (Planck scale string or whatever), except for it's definition which is a "static electric field". Catt shows how a static electric field arises from energy current, and on the same page (higher up), he explains:

"a) Energy current can only enter a capacitor at the speed of light. b) Once inside, there is no mechanism for the energy current to slow down below the speed of light. c) The steady electrostatically charged capacitor is indistinguishable from the reciprocating, dynamic model. d) The dynamic model is necessary to explain the new feature to be explained, the charging and discharging of a capacitor, and serves all the purposes previously served by the steady, static model."

"All charge is composed of trapped Heaviside " etc. is in the version you just reverted to. I didn't write it. Look. Bm gub 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

You then say "He argues that capacitance and inductance are fictional, being artifacts..." which is another nonsensical contradiction, because artifacts are real, they are not fictional! Catt shows that a mechanism exists for charge, for capacitance and inductance. He doesn't show these things are "fictional".

That's a semantic dispute. It's perfectly valid to say "Lomonsov showed that phlogiston was fictional, being an artifact of the exchange of mass with the atmosphere during burning" or "the pentaquark turned out to be fictional; the observed bump was an artifact introduced during data analysis." OK, reword it however you like. At some point he has to be saying that some mainstream concept isn't really there, but is thought to be there due to the misintepretation of Catt's real concepts. Which concept is this? Charge current? Can we say, "catt argues that charge-current is fictional, and that the mainstream belief in is is due to XXXX"? Bm gub 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Next, you claim that Catt shows "that displacement current is not needed to explain capacitor operation". Again, this is not a contradiction of mainstream theoretical physics, where Maxwell's physical displacement current went out with the aether and in its place there is a mathematical law associated with the Yang-Mills theory whereby all operations in spacetime in fields that are too weak to cause pair-production (below Schwinger's E=10^18 v/m threshold for pair production) involve gauge bosons exchange, not an aetherial "displacement current". Since Catt's replacement for aetherial "displacement current" is light speed radiation, it's consistent with quantum field theory, unlike the old nonsense of "displacement current".

So why is it such an exciting claim? Catt's claim to fame is that he doesn't disagree with the mainstream model of current, charge, and energy stored in the static field? Delete as non-notable, then. You may notice that this claim wasn't put there by me but by previous editors; I just shortened it. You may notice that my longer version of the "criticism" section---the one you initially reacted to---said basically what you are saying now: "displacement current isn't real and everyone knows this; it is not clear why Catt labels this as an important claim." You deleted this bit with extreme prejudice, but now you're restating it. (I stand by my version: displacement current is a silly artifact which arises when you want to use Kirchoff's Laws instead of Maxwell's Equations. The correct description can come straight from Maxwell without invoking quantum field theory. But this is beside the point.)Bm gub

17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Then you claim: "As opposed to normal current (flow of charge), Catt uses energy current to describe most effects. Catt illustrates this with the Catt anomaly." This is completely false, because flow of charge has never been equivalent to flow of energy: they are two different things because charge carries negligible kinetic energy, and the energy is carried by gauge bosons (as I've just explained, the gauge bosons are same thing as the TEM wave or Heaviside energy current, they mediate the field). Consider the mass of the conduction in typical transmission lines, they are on the order of about 1 part in 2000 of the mass, and their drift velocity even in a 1 amp current is typically on the order 1 mm/s. So the energy carried and delivered (1/2)mv^2 is trivial. This has nothing to do with electron current. You are confusing the two things, and then claiming that Catt is replacing electric current with energy current. Catt has electrons in his theory, and obviously they will be moved where there is a gradient in the electric potential, so you're making up nonsense.

Dude, I left that line in 'verbatim' from the previous version of the page. You reverted to this version yourself. If you like I can accuse you of vandalism for saying such utter nonsense .... just kidding. :) If this is wrong, it was wrong in your long version and wrong in my short version. What's right? Why don't you put that into the article? Bm gub 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Finally, you say: "He does not answer that question, but states that simply asking the question proves that conventional electrodynamics must be false. The subtext of his argument here seems to be that ..."

Catt doesn't state that "asking the question proves that conventional electrodynamics must be false", the question is an assessment of the degree of consensus and scientific discussion possible in electromagnetism between experts, and it is the answer he gets from experts which decides whether or not conventional ideology is helpful to a student who asks questions and hopes to get a similar answer from each expert. Professors asked by Catt, who he names and publishes, give different answers.

"The subtext of his argument here seems to be that ..."

You write this after making a false summary of Catt's question. So you make your own false conclusion, and then you write about the "subtext" to your own false conclusion. You are writing about your own personal ideas. This is your own opinion, which must be published in a peer reviewed journal before it can be mentioned here in a Wiki article about a living person. Thank you.

Again, that's all verbatim from the 'previous version' that 'you have reverted to twice'. You're quoting yourself and arguing with it. Please read the old edit (the one before I ever showed up) more carefully. Figure out who wrote that and go yell at them instead of at me. Bm gub 17:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Further on, after more of this sort of personal insulting drivel based on your own opinions rather than on referenced facts, you write:

"Most of it is verbatim from your preferred edit. Next, for the criticism section, please give some detail on my revision: Current status of Catt's ideas. The view of Catt's ideas by mainstream physicists ..."

Here, you are giving your views and claiming to be giving a consensus by "mainstream physicists". You don't quite seem to be aware that mainstream physicists have contradictory views. If you read Catt's book "Catt Question", you will notice that there are two different views on a simple question. There is no consensus whatsoever. So all your writing on this page is insulting self-opinions, unsubstantiated by even a grain of evidence. It's rubbish, it's offensive, ... Photocopier 16:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Photocopier said: