|
Msg for Reg, G4FGQ
Hi Reg,
This msg is a repeat of my last post for you in the TLI thread in case you missed it. "Another subject.: I'm wondering if I have your correct email address. During the past two years, or more, I've sent you several emails with no response. Yet you responded to my posts on this rraa in a cordial and friendly manner. In one of my emails I asked if I had said something that offended you so that I could apologize, but no response. During a cruise on the North and Baltic Seas two years ago I was in London at both the beginning and end of the cruise. I emailed you twice while in London and three times from the ship, asking for your phone number so I talk with you to learn how to find you for a visit. I first used the address you show on your posts with the 'zzz', but it came back--wrong address. I then used your address without the 'zzz' with no response. Can you help me understand what went wrong, because I really wanted to meet you while in England. Walt |
My dear Walt,
I have so many messages on my screen that some are being displayed as "no longer available". Fortuately I did find your appeal amongst them. Anyway, I shall now delete the lot and start again with a clean slate. Over the years I have been aware of some of your communications. On one occasion I received a parcel of your papers, which I think you also sent to other people, for which, if I remember correctly, I briefly thanked you for. On another occasion you said you would be visiting Europe and it would be possible for you to visit me. Not being the best of sociable people (an admitted personal handicap) and not being in the best of health to receive visitors at the time I'm sorry I did not take the possibility sufficiently seriously. I am still not in the best of health and never will be. On the other hand I do not expect to pass into the next world in the immediate future. Its just old age. But I still have my wits about me. And I can express myself well in plain old English without having to revert to the subject of Boston Tea Parties. And beginning a sentence with 'and' is perfectly legitimate. So Walt, what's on your mind? If you would like to discuss things in public it's OK by me. What about "The Conjugate Match". (Believe me, it took several minutes to recollect the name of what sort of match it is. But perhaps that's because I'm 3 parts of the way down down a bottle of European Rumanian Red. I hasten to add I have no intention of neglecting the excellent Californian varieties.) ---- Yours sincerely, Reg, G4FGQ =================================== "Walter Maxwell" wrote in message ... Hi Reg, This msg is a repeat of my last post for you in the TLI thread in case you missed it. "Another subject.: I'm wondering if I have your correct email address. During the past two years, or more, I've sent you several emails with no response. Yet you responded to my posts on this rraa in a cordial and friendly manner. In one of my emails I asked if I had said something that offended you so that I could apologize, but no response. During a cruise on the North and Baltic Seas two years ago I was in London at both the beginning and end of the cruise. I emailed you twice while in London and three times from the ship, asking for your phone number so I talk with you to learn how to find you for a visit. I first used the address you show on your posts with the 'zzz', but it came back--wrong address. I then used your address without the 'zzz' with no response. Can you help me understand what went wrong, because I really wanted to meet you while in England. Walt |
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:29:52 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote: snip So Walt, what's on your mind? If you would like to discuss things in public it's OK by me. Well, Reg, what has been on my mind for a long time is whether I was getting to you with the correct email address. It's gratifying to learn that I have. I am indeed sorry to learn of your disability, and understand why visitors would cause you discomfort. However, if on chance I'm able to visit your marvelous UK again I'll at least call you on the phone. I must tell you that Peter, G3WIX answered my post, and gave me your number, which I'll be sure to have with me. My regret while in the UK is that the time was too short, because I would have liked to see more of it than one day in London. I'd lke to avoid Heathow next time, though. Took a taxi two hours get out of it. There are several other UK hams that I'd like to see. In addition, my ancestors blew in from Scotland in the late 1700's, so I'd like to go to Glasgow and research to see how far I can go back. I'll need to refresh my knowledge of the location of JC Maxwell's museum (think it's Edinburgh) to go there and see his ancestral line to determine if any of his parallel mine. Wouldn't it be neat if I could say a micro amount of his knowledge rubbed off on me? So Reg, just when you least expect it, you may get a jingle from me sometime. I'll be sure to have a goblet of the appropriate spirits in hand that we can clink when I call. Walt |
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. 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 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. 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 |
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"Reg Edwards" I can well understand your interest in J.C.Maxwell's history. http://www.sonnetusa.com/bio/maxwell.asp Above webpage includes a link where one can download a .pdf file of an e-copy of an old (copyright expired, for the original book) biography of JC Maxwell. It's a fairly big file, so don't everyone download it at once. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= *** Usenet.com - The #1 Usenet Newsgroup Service on The Planet! *** http://www.usenet.com Unlimited Download - 19 Seperate Servers - 90,000 groups - Uncensored -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= |
"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
I think serious family research work would have to begin at home in the States. I've found the hardest part is linking the old scottish family history with the later U.S. history. It seems many fled Scotland for various reasons during the years, 1600-1700's, and records are scarce. I have pretty good records of the Scotland Keith's, and I have traced my U.S. history back to appx 1790-1810 VA., but can't find links to trace back to Scotland. So it's like a missing gap. But there are pay sources with possibly more info that I haven't checked yet. "IE: ship records, etc". There were Keiths in New England "MA." as early as the 1600's, but I seem to be linked more to a VA. point of entry from the records I've seen so far. The old Keith history in Scotland is quite well known as they were quite a cast of characters, but it's like it hits a brick wall at the point the various family branches came to the U.S. Hard to link the two in many cases, unless you really scour all sources. Also early U.S. history and documents can be meager to nil. Myself, I hit the brick wall at the end of the 1700's. 1800 onward, I'm pretty solid. I've traced back to my g-g-g-g-grandfather just using the web. Back into the 1700's is meager. So even though I'm most likely related to some of the old big wheels in Scotland, I have no idea which line I would come from. There are so many lines....The 1700's must have been a rough time in Scotland for a family with the land and general wealth the old Keith clan had, to decide to split up and split town for the new world. A visit to Edinburgh would be more profitable than a vist to London during a holiday visit. Most of the Keith clan was centered around Aberdeen. They founded one of the old colleges there, and Dunottar castle is the old Keith family castle. Mel Gibson filmed certain parts of "Hamlet" at that castle. Or whats left of it anyway...It's in ruins now... 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. I'm not much for skirts myself. Rednecks in Texas generally don't wear them..:/ But there is a Keith clan, family tarton, coat of arms, etc, etc...Our tarton is kind of a green/blue plaid mix... One story of the early Scotland Keiths can be found at: http://www.thekeithclan.com/ Kind of interesting...We have a pretty colorful history, but not all is that good... There was a long running feud with another clan due to some acts involving some of the Keiths..Resulted in the death of a girl one of the Keiths fancied..."kinda long story, but it can be found on the net. "That started a feud which lasted for many, many years. I think it just recently finally ended with both clans finally getting together and forming a truce.. MK |
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 |
Q. What's the difference between a Genealogist and a Gynaecologist?
a. One looks up the family tree, the other looks up the family bush. "Reg Edwards" wrote in message I think serious family research work would have to begin at home in the States. |
"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 |
Walter Maxwell wrote:
... I don't think I'd get into a kilt. You would, no doubt, make the cover of Worldradio. :-) -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =----- |
Mark
In the 1600s the prime point of departure was the West India Docks in London. East India docks were for Australia. Actual records of passengers have been put on the computor by the Mormans.During those times seamen were very prone to accidents and on reaching the U.S. were not hired for the return trip. Many of these such as those with broken limbs stayed in the U.S. when they were healed and headed into the far lands and became trappers and traders. There are stories of some that made good along the Mississippi and even had towns named after them ( Gaylsburg I think was one of them) The point that I am making is that not all were emigrating passengers because many missed the boat for the return trip for one reason or another. As for the person who thought his clan came from Glasgow that was a real surprise to me as we normally just called them Catholic or Protestant "gangs" Most of the Scots that were pushed out of the Highland Light Infantry finished up in my part of the military and certainly gave credence to the stories of Glasgow and the Goballs. One member from Glasgow asked if I would write a letter for him to get reinstatement to a soccer leave. He told me he was suspended "sine die" to which I asked why.Apparently he knocked the referee cold after an augument on the fielde. I declined to write the letter expressing his remorse. Art @wt.net (Mark Keith) wrote in message . com... "Reg Edwards" wrote in message I think serious family research work would have to begin at home in the States. I've found the hardest part is linking the old scottish family history with the later U.S. history. It seems many fled Scotland for various reasons during the years, 1600-1700's, and records are scarce. I have pretty good records of the Scotland Keith's, and I have traced my U.S. history back to appx 1790-1810 VA., but can't find links to trace back to Scotland. So it's like a missing gap. But there are pay sources with possibly more info that I haven't checked yet. "IE: ship records, etc". There were Keiths in New England "MA." as early as the 1600's, but I seem to be linked more to a VA. point of entry from the records I've seen so far. The old Keith history in Scotland is quite well known as they were quite a cast of characters, but it's like it hits a brick wall at the point the various family branches came to the U.S. Hard to link the two in many cases, unless you really scour all sources. Also early U.S. history and documents can be meager to nil. Myself, I hit the brick wall at the end of the 1700's. 1800 onward, I'm pretty solid. I've traced back to my g-g-g-g-grandfather just using the web. Back into the 1700's is meager. So even though I'm most likely related to some of the old big wheels in Scotland, I have no idea which line I would come from. There are so many lines....The 1700's must have been a rough time in Scotland for a family with the land and general wealth the old Keith clan had, to decide to split up and split town for the new world. A visit to Edinburgh would be more profitable than a vist to London during a holiday visit. Most of the Keith clan was centered around Aberdeen. They founded one of the old colleges there, and Dunottar castle is the old Keith family castle. Mel Gibson filmed certain parts of "Hamlet" at that castle. Or whats left of it anyway...It's in ruins now... 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. I'm not much for skirts myself. Rednecks in Texas generally don't wear them..:/ But there is a Keith clan, family tarton, coat of arms, etc, etc...Our tarton is kind of a green/blue plaid mix... One story of the early Scotland Keiths can be found at: http://www.thekeithclan.com/ Kind of interesting...We have a pretty colorful history, but not all is that good... There was a long running feud with another clan due to some acts involving some of the Keiths..Resulted in the death of a girl one of the Keiths fancied..."kinda long story, but it can be found on the net. "That started a feud which lasted for many, many years. I think it just recently finally ended with both clans finally getting together and forming a truce.. MK |
"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. |
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