And then consider the energy
flow just in front and just following the voltage step
as it propagates down the line and back and down and back...

=======================

Kelvin had trouble with voltage steps when trying to predict signalling
speed on the first Atlantic telegraph cable. They went ahead, chartered the
Great Eastern steamship, steamed West and laid the thing anyway. Shortly
afterwards it broke. Kelvin was created a Lord for his un-finished services
and had a bridge named after him.

But it was indeed a difficult problem in that day and age. Twenty years
later, hard-of-hearing Heaviside invented a brand new branch of mathematics,
the Operational Calculus, to solve that particular, and a great number of
other problems. For HIS services to mankind, as a revolutionary, he was
derided by the pompous Establishment whose members resorted only to
plagiarised text books. Heaviside only had a Layer named after him.

To their own credit, it was American communications engineers who eventually
acknowledged his genius. But then, Americans always did have sympathetic
feelings towards revolutionaries.

What amazes me is the amount of trouble some modern American engineers still
appear to suffer from on the subject of propagation of an electric current
along a pair of wires. Wires have been around a long time now.

Instead of thinking in terms of frequency and waves why not do as Oliver did
and try time and waveshape. It worked for him. Exactly what, where and when
is being reflected becomes clear.

And if anybody enjoys playing with numbers just replace 'j-omega' with 's'
(It was 'p' when I first played with it.)

Incidentally, the concept of wire-gauges originated in my home city,
Birmingham, England. Faraday was familiar with it. It was internationally
known as the BWG. The Americans, just to be different, changed theirs to
AWG. Now (nearly) everybody has gone metric. ;o)
----
Reg, G4FGQ