Like any complex topic, electromagnetic theory has its own vocabulary. When speaking about dielectrics we may refer to their permittivity, and discussions on magnetic circuits might find terms like reluctance and inductance bandied about. At a more practical level, a ham radio operator might discuss the impedance of the coaxial cable used to send signals to an antenna that will then be bounced off the ionosphere for long-range communications.

It’s everyday stuff to most of us, but none of this vocabulary would exist if it hadn’t been for Oliver Heaviside, the brilliant but challenging self-taught British electrical engineer and researcher. He coined all these terms and many more in his life-long quest to understand the mysteries of the electromagnetic world, and gave us much of the theoretical basis for telecommunications.

The Family Business

To say that Oliver Heaviside’s early life stacked the deck against him is more than a mild understatement. He was born in 1850 in the same gritty London neighborhood that Charles Dickens grew up in, surrounded by the same sorts of characters bred from poverty and the societal changes forced by industrialization. Oliver’s own father, a wood engraver for the publishing industry, saw his trade become irrelevant due to technological advances. The four Heaviside sons suffered from the resultant poverty, as well as the physical abuse doled out by their embittered and frustrated father.

Oliver attended school for only a few years, during which time he showed promise. Family circumstances prevented him from continuing his formal education, and by 16 his academic career was over. But what the family lacked financially they made up for in connections. His mother’s sister had married the great physicist Charles Wheatstone, who took Oliver and his brother Arthur under his wing, putting them to work in Wheatstone’s Electric Telegraph Company.

Like his formal education, his foray into gainful employment would be successful but short-lived. He did manage to publish several scholarly papers on electrical measurements during his time in the telegraph industry, including improvements to his uncle’s famous Wheatstone bridge circuit. His work was good enough to earn praise from famed scientist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. But Heaviside had a difficult personality that grated on his managers and peers, and he suffered from vague and unspecified ailments that he was sure would worsen if he continued to work. So at the age of 24, he gave up his position and went to live with his parents.

Loading the Lines

Heaviside would never be employed again in the traditional sense, but he was by no means idle. He began a long, productive period of independent research, working largely in isolation in a spare room in his parents’ house. He explored the problems of transmission lines, like the long-noted “skin effect” where the high-frequency alternating currents tended to flow toward the outer surface of a conductor. Heaviside was able to mathematically explain the skin effect for the first time. During this same …read more

Source:: Hackaday