Forgotten Genius: A Maverick of Electrical Science \ stacker news ~BooksAndArticles

Forgotten Genius: A Maverick of Electrical Science

2322 sats \ 9 comments \ @cascdr 28 Oct BooksAndArticles

Recently finished this book. It's about Oliver Heaviside: one of the key pioneers in electrical science in the 19th century.

As an electrical engineer by training, I've personally battled through a lot of the oddities and challenges of electrical science. Heaviside was a legend that transformed the way we do a lot of analysis. Before him, it was a crapshoot on understanding experiments/circuits.

Rattling off some of Heaviside's accomplishments:

Simplified Maxwell's 20 electromagnetic equations into 4 vector equations
Created operational calculus for solving differential equations
Predicted the ionosphere (Kennelly-Heaviside Layer) for radio waves
Developed transmission line theory and impedance matching
Introduced Heaviside step function and vector calculus notation

Heaviside Transmission Line Models - these made it possible to transmit distortion free phone calls and transatlantic telegraph

Victorian Era Electrical Laboratory courtesy of ChatGPT. Not far off from the reality

Heaviside is one of my heroes because despite the fact that he was "lowborn" as well as ridden with health issues, he still found a way to make the most of his gifts and insights. A true pleb.

To say Heaviside is neurodivergent is an understatement. The guy frequently invented his own mathematics because he didn't like the way anyone else did it. He would not give an inch and frequently locked orns with

Parallels to Innovators Today

The book is as much about his accomplishments as it is about his odd personality & the scientific community around him. I am pretty convinced he would be an autistic bitcoin dev type if he were alive today.

These battles between Victorian electrical scientists resembles contentious bitcoin dev arguments I've witnessed. My personal favorite part of this book was when Oliver got word of a rough conference for his chief rival, William Preece. As President of the Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post Office, Preece held a lot of sway and viewed Heaviside as a nuisance. He considered himself a practical man and didn't like a youngster "lowborn" trying to tell him anything. At the Bath Conference of Electrical Scientists in 1893, he embarrassed himself. This was Heaviside's reaction:

I consider this to be an analog meme celebrating an analog ratio that happened at the Bath conference (analog twitter thread ).

This book left me with an appreciation for the scientific process and for the timelessness of human nature. The egos. The clash between practice and theory. The amount of human error that goes into pushing people down the wrong paths. The brief flashes of insight that moves us forward.

I hope you enjoyed this Pleb Book Report & consider checking it out for yourself!

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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @DesertDave 28 Oct

I have worked with electricity my whole life. It was my business. And there is still so much mystery. I understand it in a way and I completely don't as well. I am grateful we had people like this figuring things out so we could all live the way we do.

41 sats \ 3 replies \ @Satosora 28 Oct

I work on boilers and stuff, but I never really understood all the wiring to it. Those guys are amazing when they look at wiring diagrams and all the colorful wires and are able to make stuff work. If it was me, I bet the box would explode.

30 sats \ 2 replies \ @cascdr OP 28 Oct

It's like anything else. You pour in enough rounds of practice and you become a wizard.

Speaking from personal experience it's remarkable how rudimentary my understanding was (I thought I knew a lot) from freshman year of EE school to where I got to a few years in the industry.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Satosora 28 Oct

Right. I just dont have much of a brain for the electrical stuff. More into the mechanical and chemistry side of things.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @cascdr OP 28 Oct

I just dont have much of a brain for the electrical stuff.

Probably some truth to that. But you probably also had bad teachers too. All the electrical stuff can be explained in terms of mechanics as well.

In fact one of the key analogies drawn on by the author is how: Heaviside used to make ripples/waves using cloths in these big wash bins. And he discovered that if you tie knots at particular intervals you could influence how the waves developed.

That later influenced his work on distortion free transmission line theory. Adding inductance at intervals mirrors this effect but in electrical circuits.

His work on calculus also has value/import in mechanical systems. My father taught me this:

In mechanics there is this differential equation: F(net) = k*x + c * v + m * a = k * x + c * (dx/dt) + m * (d²x/dt²)

Where k is the spring constant, c is the damping constant, m is mass and x is position.

It describes forces acting upon a body and combines Newton's second law, hooks law and Stoke's Law for damping (dissipiatoin of energy in the system). The beauty of this type of notation (pioneered by Heaviside) is that it simplifies things into derivatives of x (poistion). The dt terms indicate the rate at which a term varies in time.

In electrical systems there is this differential equation: V(total) = q/C + R * I + L * (di/dt) = (1/C)q + R*(dq/dt) + L*(d²q/dt²)

Where V is voltage at a given point in space, C is capacitance, R is resistance and L is inductance and q is. It is likewise a combination of multiple physical laws that can be derived from Maxwell's Equations (also pioneered and simplified by Mr. Heaviside). These equations together reveal how fractal and analogous nature is. You can actually apply each of these laws spatially and understand circuit theory, wave propagation, free body diagrams and more.

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 28 Oct

I have nightmares just remembering those circuits from university.

43 sats \ 2 replies \ @cascdr OP 28 Oct

I had professors that would have field days playing with that fear.

Eventually you learn to face it and rely on first principles rather than memorization/rote.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 28 Oct

Understanding is always the best way, I don't like to memorize!

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @cascdr OP 28 Oct

one of the most singular moments of my life was when my (amazing) high school physics teacher told us: Physics is unlike any other topic you'll learn. Other topics there's a lot of studying for memorization. Physics is a lot more like kung fu. You need to interpret the meaning of these physical laws and develop an intuition.

How right he was. I think I had a genetic predisposition (dad is a rock star engineer). But that interaction positively influenced my life more than he probably realized.

Side note: that physics teacher was a maniac. He would play 80s music in class, make inapporpriate jokes. Let us do crazy impractical and messy experiments. He also had a weird OCD tick where no matter how far he was from a yellow light he'd try to make it.