Bill Turner wrote:
On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 18:37:01 +0100, "Ian White, G3SEK"
wrote:

"Don't worry, you'll learn to cope with it" - and so we did.

_________________________________________________ ________

I am mildly curious how long this error will be propagated. Surely it
will still be around after I'm gone, but will engineers five hundred or
a thousand years still be defying logic?


Faraday established the convention that "current" flows from "positive"
to "negative" in 1834.

Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, and found it had a negative
charge.

But even then, it was already far too late to think about changing the
convention about "current". Scientists who had to work with electrons
would have to learn to live with it.

And if it was already too late in 1897...

Not a big deal, but it is fascinating to me how nobody will take the
bull by the horns and fix it.

There really ain't much that's needful of fixin'. Electrical engineering
was growing and thriving before electrons were discovered, and a century
later, everything still works. Even "electronics" hardly ever has to
think about electrons, or the sign of their charge. We're doing just
fine, thank you.

It's an untidy world, Bill. Please get over it... soon :-)



--
73 from Ian G3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek