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Letters


I understand that Aristotelians believed


Figure 2: Four factors make up the TEM wave: Electric current in the conductors i; magnetic field, or flux, surrounding the conductors B; electric charge on the surface of the conductors +q and -q; and electric field, or flux, in the vacuum terminating on the charge D


that a force was necessary to keep bodies in motion and that, in the absence of this force, the motion would cease. Tis theory led them into certain difficulties. For instance a spear, once thrown, appeared to continue to move without a force being present. Te philosophers rose to this challenge magnificently with the theory that air, displaced from ahead of the spear, rushed to the rear and generated the requisite force – the theory was saved. Unfortunately they missed the simple point first noted by Newton, that it is in the nature of a moving body to continue to move. In the same way I fear that Maxwell


Figure 3: When the switch to the battery to the left is closed, a voltage/current step advances towards the transformer at the speed of light


or ignored, as it was. However, along came digital electronics, where the signal from one logic gate to the next was not a sine wave, but a steady voltage of 0V suddenly changing to a steady voltage of 5V. While at 5V for some time, a steady,


constant flow of E x H energy in the TEM wave involving fixed E and fixed H travelled along the transmission line at the speed of light – and perhaps could be classed as light. According to Aristotle and today’s lecturers and text-book writers, something must still be helping the signal along. Since E and H were not changing, the change in E could not be causing H and the change in H could not be causing E. However, Fourier Series came to the rescue. Lecturers and text-book writers told each other that any (periodic) waveform could be represented by a combination of sine waves, or possibly was a combination of sine waves. Te word “periodic” was overlooked, since a step is not periodic, and cannot be represented by sine waves. Professor Archibald Howie, while head of


the Cavendish, went so far as to tell me that physical reality was composed of sine waves!


So, in the middle of a steady signal, changing E and H causing each other in one frequency component of the steady 5V signal, helping each other along, while changing E could be causing H and H causing E in another superposed sine wave! Aſter all, it was known that in white light, different colours (frequencies) could be superposed. Te different colours must be helping themselves along with their own varying E and H, ignoring the other colours with their varying E and H, sometimes varying in the opposite direction. So, at the same point, a rising E caused H while a falling E caused an H in the opposite direction. Te early discoveries of Oersted and


Faraday, combined with the impression that Maxwell’s Equations imply causality, make the lecturer and text-book writer unable to envisage Heaviside’s correct version of the TEM wave, which I called “Te Heaviside Signal” in this magazine in July 1979 (http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x18j51.pdf ). Tis was admirably described by Dr David Walton in “Wireless World” in November 1979 and November 1980.


invented a complex explanation for a very simple phenomenon, i.e. that electromagnetic radiation, or energy current E x H, moves at the speed of light – and that’s all, because that is what energy current does. No mechanism invoking E producing H and H, in return, producing E is required. .... A faulty set of primitives can lead to


problems in a theory which necessitate the introduction of ad hoc causality relations. In a similar way I believe that the causality relations alleged to reside in Maxwell’s equations (i.e. changing magnetic field producing electric field and changing electric field producing magnetic field) are spurious. A moving body continues to move because that is what moving bodies do; an electromagnetic disturbance or energy current, of whatever distribution, continues to move because that is what energy currents do. In other words the statement “energy current travels at the velocity of light” is a primitive assumption in my theoretical framework which requires no further explanation. In my framework, the moving energy current is the simple situation and ‘static’ electric and magnetic fields are composite. Tese ideas are unknown to any lecturer or


text-book writer, and you will not find them published by any such. Tey are at the core of a valid electromagnetic theory, which at present is stalled.


Ivor Catt November 2020


www.electronicsworld.co.uk December/January 2021 63


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