"Walter Maxwell" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 02:11:36 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

My phone number is 021-561-4959 and is unlikely to change. But what you
may
find as a result of a wecome call is anybody's guess.

I can well understand your interest in J.C.Maxwell's history. The Scots
family was not very large. It is fairly likely you have connections.
Should
you enquire further then, as perhaps you have already found, a google on
"Maxwell" is a good starting point. At the age of 13 he had already
established mimself as a budding genius. His professional career is well
documented.

Reg, I have several documents about JC, and at one point on the internet I
learned that his genealogy is available for viewing in the JCM museum,
which I
believe is in Edinburg, but not sure. My clan came from Glasgow, so there
may
be no connection.

But I can't resist the opportunity to add, it was Heaviside's self-taught
nathematics which taught the world how to understand radio waves in all
the
world's text books.

I'm well aware of Heaviside's contribution to organizing much of Maxwell's
work,
which wasn't suffuciently organized for general use. I have original
copies of a
3-volume set of Heaviside's books, plus an original copy of Hertz'
"Electric
Waves."

I think serious family research work would have to begin at home in the
States. A visit to Edinburgh would be more profitable than a vist to
London
during a holiday visit.

That's exactly what I thought.

Another visit to a high-class tailor whilst in Edinburgh on holiday would
eventually fit you up with a genuine Maxwell tartaned kilt. I expect you
know that a kilt is a heavy, pleated, woven skirt, with a sporan to
contain
your loose cash, under which is nothing in the way of clothing. Many
Scotsmen still wear them and not on ceremonial occsions. Furthermore,
Scotswomen are proud to be so accompanied.
----
Yours, Reg, G4FGQ

I have a copy of the Maxwell clan's tartan and coat of arms, but I don't
think
I'd get into a kilt.

Thanks for the welcome info, Reg,

Walt

Not to diminish Heaviside's contribution, it was Gibb's work that led to the
present mathematical expression of Maxwell's equations.
The Heaviside equation survives to this day as the description of the
electromagnetic field of a moving charged particle.
But since Gibbs was American I'm sure you Brits will argue.
;^)
73
H.
NQ5H

"H. Adam Stevens, NQ5H" said -
Not to diminish Heaviside's contribution, it was Gibb's work that led to
the
present mathematical expression of Maxwell's equations.
The Heaviside equation survives to this day as the description of the
electromagnetic field of a moving charged particle.
But since Gibbs was American I'm sure you Brits will argue.

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

I'll allow a wine-assisted imagination to wander around my own history.

I came across Gibbs around 1948 by accident while searching for more
information on transmission lines in general. Google had not been invented.
He appears to have made his name known (no doubt also in other matters)
because of his "Gibb's Phenomenon", an overshoot of some kind in an
extension of Fourier's Waveform Analysis. At the time I had no interest in
'overshoots' and forgot all about it. My ignorance about Gibb's other work
has continued ever since. I appologise for no mention of his name in
connection with tidying up Maxwell's work. And there's no reason at all to
resurect the Boston Tea Party.

Heaviside died in solitude in 1925. I was born during a freezing 6-feet
deep snow-storm 9 months later. I sometimes like to think there is a
spiritual connection.

Mother was a little hard-working woman who took in laundry and
clothes-ironing from the slightly better-off classes. Father was a
30-shillings a week iron-bolt header but the national General Strike was
imminent. In his spare time he taught himself to drill holes in ebonite
panels using a red-hot poker the smell of which began my technical
education. But he could solve quadratic equations in his head without the
use of pencil and paper or any knowledge of algebraic symbols. I never
understood how he did it. Although he lived to the age of 90 he could never
explain it himself.

snip

Around 1951, as a sideline with other duties, while working in the
Engineer-in-Chief's Office of the British Post Office, I first became
involved with the location of faults on transmission lines. Then, for a
period, I specialised in faults on the then new deep-sea coaxial cables with
submerged valve-type repeaters (amplifiers). Transistors were not good or
reliable enough.

I worked alone but with the facilities of a shared workshop and staff. My
boss was an ex-cable ship Cable Testing Officer, a Ph.D, I think next to the
captain in rank, who always said the only doctor in his family was his
brother, a doctor of medicine. His name was Bray and he had the knickname,
when not in his company, of "The Vicar".

snip

I became involved with reflection coefficients, etc., in the frequency range
0.1Hz up to HF using rectangular-waves and sinewaves. The Dollis Hill,
Research Depapartment laboratories (the PO Bell-Labs) made me a 0.1 to 100
Hz, balanced-and-screened output transformer, to be used in a power
amplifier, a test signal generator. The amount of 10-thou, mu-metal used in
it necessitated a special order being placed on the lamination manufacturer.

I had to make my own precision 0-to-11.111 microfarad, 5-dial, variable
capacitor entirely out of specially made polyethylene-dielectric metal-cased
capacitors. Absorption with all other dielectrics was far too high at 0.1Hz
to make accurate impedance bridge measurements. Mica was awful!

Incidentally, apart from research work, the only occasion this capacitor was
used for a practical purpose was to locate a fault on a land cable when I
was in Sweden. The embarrassed Swedish engineers were not aware the fault
existed. Needless to say I promised aboard the ship on my departure not to
include the incident in my report. And I didn't. The Vicar, with his cruel
sense of humour, was not altogether happy but for technical political
purposes I had him by the balls. He was really a kind fellow and before
retirement he ended up as Head of the PO Engineering Training College.

Some years later I had the idea of donating the transformer and capacitor to
the Science Museum in London. But some other equally sentimental collector
had already stolen them. I sometimes wonder (2004) where they are now.

snip

But this is a long way from the much neglected Heaviside.

During the course of my fault location research I ran into a mental
blockage. Ultimately, I had to translate the appearance of the reflected
waves, as appeared on a 10 second persistance cathode ray tube, a function
of time, into miles from one end of the cable. That is all the ship's
captain needs to know before he can leave port and set a course. He can then
retire to his lonely cabin with a bottle of duty-free scotch if he should so
wish.

Eventually I discovered Heaviside's Operational Calculus. Lo and behold,
winding the handle on a German mechanical calculating machine, there
appeared on a sheet of graph paper the same shaped curves as on the
long-persistence CRT. The fault locating equipment was eventually installed
at oceanic terminal stations. I had the oportunity to use it on the first
breakdown to occur on the relatively short Middlesborough-Gothenburg cable
which, as usual, was due to an unknown fishing trawler in the north sea.

All the learned arguments on this newsgroup about SWR, the various
reflections and virtual this that and the other, occur because time is
ignored. It is admitted time does complicate matters. But Heaviside sorted
transient matters out, versus time, many moons ago.
---
Reg.

Reg Edwards wrote:
. . .
I came across Gibbs around 1948 by accident while searching for more
information on transmission lines in general. Google had not been invented.
He appears to have made his name known (no doubt also in other matters)
because of his "Gibb's Phenomenon", an overshoot of some kind in an
extension of Fourier's Waveform Analysis. At the time I had no interest in
'overshoots' and forgot all about it. . .
. . .

It's commonly known that a square wave consists of a sine wave of the
square wave's fundamental frequency, plus all its odd harmonics.
Specifically, all components are in phase, and their amplitudes are the
inverse of the harmonic number. That is, if the amplitude of the
fundamenatal sine wave is 1, the amplitude of the third harmonic is 1/3,
the amplitude of the fifth harmonic is 1/5, and so forth.

So we should be able to create a square wave by adding all those sine
waves -- right?

It turns out that if we add the first few sine wave components, we have
a fairly square looking wave -- but it has an overshoot at the leading
and trailing edges. As we add more and more harmonics, the result gets
more square, and the overshoot gets narrower and narrower -- but it
remains, and with the same amplitude. Although the width approaches zero
as the number of sine waves you've added gets infinite, there's always
an overshoot for any finite number of sine waves.

This is one manifestation of the Gibbs' Phenomenon, which also applies
to other situtations. There's a really nifty demo at
http://klebanov.homeip.net/~pavel/fb...applets/Gibbs/.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

"Roy Lewallen" wrote
It's commonly known that a square wave consists of a sine wave of the
square wave's fundamental frequency, plus all its odd harmonics.
Specifically, all components are in phase, and their amplitudes are the
inverse of the harmonic number. That is, if the amplitude of the
fundamenatal sine wave is 1, the amplitude of the third harmonic is 1/3,
the amplitude of the fifth harmonic is 1/5, and so forth.

So we should be able to create a square wave by adding all those sine
waves -- right?

It turns out that if we add the first few sine wave components, we have
a fairly square looking wave -- but it has an overshoot at the leading
and trailing edges. As we add more and more harmonics, the result gets
more square, and the overshoot gets narrower and narrower -- but it
remains, and with the same amplitude. Although the width approaches zero
as the number of sine waves you've added gets infinite, there's always
an overshoot for any finite number of sine waves.

This is one manifestation of the Gibbs' Phenomenon, which also applies
to other situtations. There's a really nifty demo at
http://klebanov.homeip.net/~pavel/fb...applets/Gibbs/.

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

The trouble with Fourier when attempting to use him with waveshapes on
transmission lines is that there is no fundamental frequency or cyclic
repetitions. His infinite series are solely functions of frequency.

Whereas volts and current on lines are functions of time (the recprocal of
frequency) and distance. That's where Heaviside's Operational Calculus comes
in. In special cases (if you can find your particular problem in the long
list of transforms and their inverses) his methods reduce to Laplace
Transforms. But in general, as with Fourier, his answers appear as infinite
series. Of course, infinite series pose no problems with present-day
computers.

The very first problems were encountered by Kelvin with the speed and
distortion and economics of telegraph-code signals on long cables. 0 and 1
signals change shape and merge into each other at high data rates. Fourier
could not provide answers. Exactly the same problems still occur on high
data-rate digital circuits and light-fibers, further aggravated by echos and
reflections. But Heaviside's revolutionary mathematics, which so upset the
old-wives of professors of his day and abolished the need for SWR's, did the
trick.
---
Reg, G4FGQ

"And there's no reason at all to
resurect the Boston Tea Party."
A waste of good tea, no doubt.
73
H.
"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...

"H. Adam Stevens, NQ5H" said -
Not to diminish Heaviside's contribution, it was Gibb's work that led to
the
present mathematical expression of Maxwell's equations.
The Heaviside equation survives to this day as the description of the
electromagnetic field of a moving charged particle.
But since Gibbs was American I'm sure you Brits will argue.

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

I'll allow a wine-assisted imagination to wander around my own history.

I came across Gibbs around 1948 by accident while searching for more
information on transmission lines in general. Google had not been
invented.
He appears to have made his name known (no doubt also in other matters)
because of his "Gibb's Phenomenon", an overshoot of some kind in an
extension of Fourier's Waveform Analysis. At the time I had no interest
in
'overshoots' and forgot all about it. My ignorance about Gibb's other
work
has continued ever since. I appologise for no mention of his name in
connection with tidying up Maxwell's work. And there's no reason at all to
resurect the Boston Tea Party.

Heaviside died in solitude in 1925. I was born during a freezing 6-feet
deep snow-storm 9 months later. I sometimes like to think there is a
spiritual connection.

Mother was a little hard-working woman who took in laundry and
clothes-ironing from the slightly better-off classes. Father was a
30-shillings a week iron-bolt header but the national General Strike was
imminent. In his spare time he taught himself to drill holes in ebonite
panels using a red-hot poker the smell of which began my technical
education. But he could solve quadratic equations in his head without the
use of pencil and paper or any knowledge of algebraic symbols. I never
understood how he did it. Although he lived to the age of 90 he could
never
explain it himself.

snip

Around 1951, as a sideline with other duties, while working in the
Engineer-in-Chief's Office of the British Post Office, I first became
involved with the location of faults on transmission lines. Then, for a
period, I specialised in faults on the then new deep-sea coaxial cables
with
submerged valve-type repeaters (amplifiers). Transistors were not good or
reliable enough.

I worked alone but with the facilities of a shared workshop and staff. My
boss was an ex-cable ship Cable Testing Officer, a Ph.D, I think next to
the
captain in rank, who always said the only doctor in his family was his
brother, a doctor of medicine. His name was Bray and he had the knickname,
when not in his company, of "The Vicar".

snip

I became involved with reflection coefficients, etc., in the frequency
range
0.1Hz up to HF using rectangular-waves and sinewaves. The Dollis Hill,
Research Depapartment laboratories (the PO Bell-Labs) made me a 0.1 to 100
Hz, balanced-and-screened output transformer, to be used in a power
amplifier, a test signal generator. The amount of 10-thou, mu-metal used
in
it necessitated a special order being placed on the lamination
manufacturer.

I had to make my own precision 0-to-11.111 microfarad, 5-dial, variable
capacitor entirely out of specially made polyethylene-dielectric
metal-cased
capacitors. Absorption with all other dielectrics was far too high at
0.1Hz
to make accurate impedance bridge measurements. Mica was awful!

Incidentally, apart from research work, the only occasion this capacitor
was
used for a practical purpose was to locate a fault on a land cable when I
was in Sweden. The embarrassed Swedish engineers were not aware the fault
existed. Needless to say I promised aboard the ship on my departure not to
include the incident in my report. And I didn't. The Vicar, with his
cruel
sense of humour, was not altogether happy but for technical political
purposes I had him by the balls. He was really a kind fellow and before
retirement he ended up as Head of the PO Engineering Training College.

Some years later I had the idea of donating the transformer and capacitor
to
the Science Museum in London. But some other equally sentimental
collector
had already stolen them. I sometimes wonder (2004) where they are now.

snip

But this is a long way from the much neglected Heaviside.

During the course of my fault location research I ran into a mental
blockage. Ultimately, I had to translate the appearance of the reflected
waves, as appeared on a 10 second persistance cathode ray tube, a function
of time, into miles from one end of the cable. That is all the ship's
captain needs to know before he can leave port and set a course. He can
then
retire to his lonely cabin with a bottle of duty-free scotch if he should
so
wish.

Eventually I discovered Heaviside's Operational Calculus. Lo and behold,
winding the handle on a German mechanical calculating machine, there
appeared on a sheet of graph paper the same shaped curves as on the
long-persistence CRT. The fault locating equipment was eventually
installed
at oceanic terminal stations. I had the oportunity to use it on the first
breakdown to occur on the relatively short Middlesborough-Gothenburg cable
which, as usual, was due to an unknown fishing trawler in the north sea.

All the learned arguments on this newsgroup about SWR, the various
reflections and virtual this that and the other, occur because time is
ignored. It is admitted time does complicate matters. But Heaviside sorted
transient matters out, versus time, many moons ago.
---
Reg.

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 22:48:04 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

I'll allow a wine-assisted imagination to wander around my own history.

I came across Gibbs around 1948 by accident while searching for more
information on transmission lines in general. Google had not been invented.
He appears to have made his name known (no doubt also in other matters)
because of his "Gibb's Phenomenon", an overshoot of some kind in an
extension of Fourier's Waveform Analysis. At the time I had no interest in
'overshoots' and forgot all about it. My ignorance about Gibb's other work
has continued ever since. I appologise for no mention of his name in
connection with tidying up Maxwell's work. And there's no reason at all to
resurect the Boston Tea Party.

Heaviside died in solitude in 1925. I was born during a freezing 6-feet
deep snow-storm 9 months later. I sometimes like to think there is a
spiritual connection.

Mother was a little hard-working woman who took in laundry and
clothes-ironing from the slightly better-off classes. Father was a
30-shillings a week iron-bolt header but the national General Strike was
imminent. In his spare time he taught himself to drill holes in ebonite
panels using a red-hot poker the smell of which began my technical
education. But he could solve quadratic equations in his head without the
use of pencil and paper or any knowledge of algebraic symbols. I never
understood how he did it. Although he lived to the age of 90 he could never
explain it himself.

snip

Around 1951, as a sideline with other duties, while working in the
Engineer-in-Chief's Office of the British Post Office, I first became
involved with the location of faults on transmission lines. Then, for a
period, I specialised in faults on the then new deep-sea coaxial cables with
submerged valve-type repeaters (amplifiers). Transistors were not good or
reliable enough.

I worked alone but with the facilities of a shared workshop and staff. My
boss was an ex-cable ship Cable Testing Officer, a Ph.D, I think next to the
captain in rank, who always said the only doctor in his family was his
brother, a doctor of medicine. His name was Bray and he had the knickname,
when not in his company, of "The Vicar".

snip

I became involved with reflection coefficients, etc., in the frequency range
0.1Hz up to HF using rectangular-waves and sinewaves. The Dollis Hill,
Research Depapartment laboratories (the PO Bell-Labs) made me a 0.1 to 100
Hz, balanced-and-screened output transformer, to be used in a power
amplifier, a test signal generator. The amount of 10-thou, mu-metal used in
it necessitated a special order being placed on the lamination manufacturer.

I had to make my own precision 0-to-11.111 microfarad, 5-dial, variable
capacitor entirely out of specially made polyethylene-dielectric metal-cased
capacitors. Absorption with all other dielectrics was far too high at 0.1Hz
to make accurate impedance bridge measurements. Mica was awful!

Incidentally, apart from research work, the only occasion this capacitor was
used for a practical purpose was to locate a fault on a land cable when I
was in Sweden. The embarrassed Swedish engineers were not aware the fault
existed. Needless to say I promised aboard the ship on my departure not to
include the incident in my report. And I didn't. The Vicar, with his cruel
sense of humour, was not altogether happy but for technical political
purposes I had him by the balls. He was really a kind fellow and before
retirement he ended up as Head of the PO Engineering Training College.

Some years later I had the idea of donating the transformer and capacitor to
the Science Museum in London. But some other equally sentimental collector
had already stolen them. I sometimes wonder (2004) where they are now.

snip

But this is a long way from the much neglected Heaviside.

During the course of my fault location research I ran into a mental
blockage. Ultimately, I had to translate the appearance of the reflected
waves, as appeared on a 10 second persistance cathode ray tube, a function
of time, into miles from one end of the cable. That is all the ship's
captain needs to know before he can leave port and set a course. He can then
retire to his lonely cabin with a bottle of duty-free scotch if he should so
wish.

Eventually I discovered Heaviside's Operational Calculus. Lo and behold,
winding the handle on a German mechanical calculating machine, there
appeared on a sheet of graph paper the same shaped curves as on the
long-persistence CRT. The fault locating equipment was eventually installed
at oceanic terminal stations. I had the oportunity to use it on the first
breakdown to occur on the relatively short Middlesborough-Gothenburg cable
which, as usual, was due to an unknown fishing trawler in the north sea.

All the learned arguments on this newsgroup about SWR, the various
reflections and virtual this that and the other, occur because time is
ignored. It is admitted time does complicate matters. But Heaviside sorted
transient matters out, versus time, many moons ago.
---
Reg.

Reg, your 'wine assisted imagination wandering around your own history' gave me
a marvelous insight into you as a person. I'm delighted to know of the exacting
and profound activities you have experinced. As I said earlier that telling of
yourself is not bragging. I find that the more one knows about a person the more
or less respect one has for him. In your case it is indeed much more.

Thank you for that marvelou insight.

Walt

"Walter Maxwell" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 22:48:04 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

I'll allow a wine-assisted imagination to wander around my own history.

I came across Gibbs around 1948 by accident while searching for more
information on transmission lines in general. Google had not been
invented.
He appears to have made his name known (no doubt also in other matters)
because of his "Gibb's Phenomenon", an overshoot of some kind in an
extension of Fourier's Waveform Analysis. At the time I had no interest
in
'overshoots' and forgot all about it. My ignorance about Gibb's other
work
has continued ever since. I appologise for no mention of his name in
connection with tidying up Maxwell's work. And there's no reason at all
to
resurect the Boston Tea Party.

Heaviside died in solitude in 1925. I was born during a freezing 6-feet
deep snow-storm 9 months later. I sometimes like to think there is a
spiritual connection.

Mother was a little hard-working woman who took in laundry and
clothes-ironing from the slightly better-off classes. Father was a
30-shillings a week iron-bolt header but the national General Strike was
imminent. In his spare time he taught himself to drill holes in ebonite
panels using a red-hot poker the smell of which began my technical
education. But he could solve quadratic equations in his head without
the
use of pencil and paper or any knowledge of algebraic symbols. I never
understood how he did it. Although he lived to the age of 90 he could
never
explain it himself.

snip

Around 1951, as a sideline with other duties, while working in the
Engineer-in-Chief's Office of the British Post Office, I first became
involved with the location of faults on transmission lines. Then, for a
period, I specialised in faults on the then new deep-sea coaxial cables
with
submerged valve-type repeaters (amplifiers). Transistors were not good or
reliable enough.

I worked alone but with the facilities of a shared workshop and staff. My
boss was an ex-cable ship Cable Testing Officer, a Ph.D, I think next to
the
captain in rank, who always said the only doctor in his family was his
brother, a doctor of medicine. His name was Bray and he had the
knickname,
when not in his company, of "The Vicar".

snip

I became involved with reflection coefficients, etc., in the frequency
range
0.1Hz up to HF using rectangular-waves and sinewaves. The Dollis Hill,
Research Depapartment laboratories (the PO Bell-Labs) made me a 0.1 to
100
Hz, balanced-and-screened output transformer, to be used in a power
amplifier, a test signal generator. The amount of 10-thou, mu-metal used
in
it necessitated a special order being placed on the lamination
manufacturer.

I had to make my own precision 0-to-11.111 microfarad, 5-dial, variable
capacitor entirely out of specially made polyethylene-dielectric
metal-cased
capacitors. Absorption with all other dielectrics was far too high at
0.1Hz
to make accurate impedance bridge measurements. Mica was awful!

Incidentally, apart from research work, the only occasion this capacitor
was
used for a practical purpose was to locate a fault on a land cable when I
was in Sweden. The embarrassed Swedish engineers were not aware the fault
existed. Needless to say I promised aboard the ship on my departure not
to
include the incident in my report. And I didn't. The Vicar, with his
cruel
sense of humour, was not altogether happy but for technical political
purposes I had him by the balls. He was really a kind fellow and before
retirement he ended up as Head of the PO Engineering Training College.

Some years later I had the idea of donating the transformer and capacitor
to
the Science Museum in London. But some other equally sentimental
collector
had already stolen them. I sometimes wonder (2004) where they are now.

snip

But this is a long way from the much neglected Heaviside.

During the course of my fault location research I ran into a mental
blockage. Ultimately, I had to translate the appearance of the reflected
waves, as appeared on a 10 second persistance cathode ray tube, a
function
of time, into miles from one end of the cable. That is all the ship's
captain needs to know before he can leave port and set a course. He can
then
retire to his lonely cabin with a bottle of duty-free scotch if he should
so
wish.

Eventually I discovered Heaviside's Operational Calculus. Lo and behold,
winding the handle on a German mechanical calculating machine, there
appeared on a sheet of graph paper the same shaped curves as on the
long-persistence CRT. The fault locating equipment was eventually
installed
at oceanic terminal stations. I had the oportunity to use it on the first
breakdown to occur on the relatively short Middlesborough-Gothenburg
cable
which, as usual, was due to an unknown fishing trawler in the north sea.

All the learned arguments on this newsgroup about SWR, the various
reflections and virtual this that and the other, occur because time is
ignored. It is admitted time does complicate matters. But Heaviside
sorted
transient matters out, versus time, many moons ago.
---
Reg.

Reg, your 'wine assisted imagination wandering around your own history'
gave me
a marvelous insight into you as a person. I'm delighted to know of the
exacting
and profound activities you have experinced. As I said earlier that
telling of
yourself is not bragging. I find that the more one knows about a person
the more
or less respect one has for him. In your case it is indeed much more.

Thank you for that marvelou insight.

Walt

Reg
That was one of the better reads I've had.
Thanks
73
H.