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From below; “Quite the
reverse. Wireless World was read by technicians, not by engineers, even
though Ivall did not allow such dismal rubbish as
slips into the journal today, for instance page 937, dec96.” So the article
below is written in 1977. The background. Why did I latch onto the Catt Anomaly,
and pursue it with vigour? Catt, Davidson and Walton had already
been prevented from publishing their lesser advances in electromagnetic theory
for a decade by earlier officials who preceded Secker. Then, in May 1976,
they made major advances. First, Walton excised Displacement Current. Then,
in the same month, Catt discovered Theory C. They withheld this theory for
some years, but finally published it in Wireless World in dec80. However,
still, today, members of the IEE or of the IEEE, the two major relevant
learned institutions in the world, do not know that this team claim a major
scientific advance made in may76. Even the fact that an advance is claimed,
let alone the nature of the claim, has been suppressed for twenty years! The
first admission of the claim is made in a ridiculing aside in Lago's review of my last book, in the IEE's ECEJ journal,
oct95, partly reproduced as appendix 4. I had already known about suppression in
science, and published my first paper thirty years ago in IEEE Trans. Comp.
feb66 under a misleading title, and because of this, it was the only paper on
the subject to pass the referees. Nobody else succeeded in publishing on the
very important subject of The Glitch until many years later, (Couranz in IEEE Trans. Comp., June75,) because the
subject was taboo. This suppression led inevitably to frequent computer
crashes, and meant that computers were unreliable. This caused the computer
industry to lose the real time market for two decades. My third (and major)
paper, finally published in the IEEE Trans. Comp. EC-16 dec67, was delayed
for three years in horrendous political wrangling, which involved Narud, the head of R&D in Motorola Phoenix, where I
worked, instructing my boss Emory Garth to fire me. Because Emory failed to
fire me, he himself had to leave. My paper began to outline the techniques
needed to interconnect the fastest ECL logic systems, which we had developed.
Our failure to educate our customers meant that the market fell back to our
competitors' ten - times - slower TTL circuit, and we lost our market to
Texas Instruments. Also, computers ran much slower for decades. (Narud had refused to develop the slower TTL circuits.) Twenty years later, in The Daily
Telegraph on 1may89, the worst suppresser of all, Maddox, long time editor of
Nature (recently retired), re-enacted Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and
the Carpenter" when he expressed concern about suppression in science.
He wrote that a discovery like Crick and Watson's Double Helix could not be
published in today's heavily censored scientific journals. Certainly,
censorship is more severe than twenty years ago, when my 1967 paper was
delayed for a mere three years. 'It
seems a shame,' old Maddox said, 'To play them such a trick. We've
led them up the garden path, And made them write so quick!' J
C Williams said nothing but 'My carpet's not too thick!' 'I
weep for you,' old Maddox said: 'I deeply sympathize.' Holding
his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. 'O
Scientists,' called Prof Secker, But answer came there none - And
this was scarcely odd, because They'd censored every one. The Earlier Background After graduating from Cambridge, I published everything that I
wanted to publish in the leading learned journals for the next twelve years.
These included the Fall Joint Computer Conference, The IEEE Transactions on
Computers, and later New Society and New Scientist. By 1972, it was clear
that the British were determined to get out of hi technology. As for me,
after twelve years of increasing disillusionment with the slow progress of
digital electronics, I decided to start a new career. First, I went teaching
Remedial English. I had already written a book about hire and fire in the U.S.A.,
which was published in six languages. Now, as a parting shot, I published a
further book, "Computer Worship", which discussed the idiocies of
the computer industry. So far, so good. However, the trouble came with my
third book, a text book on digital computer hardware design. While
researching this, I made major breakthroughs in fundamental electromagnetic
theory which were more important than anything I had published in the past.
Suddenly, I found that I had gone from 100% acceptance of all my articles for
publication to 100% rejection. Since that date, 1973, I have generally failed
to publish anything in learned journals, particularly failing in Britain, but
also failing round the world. Now that my material was more advanced and
important, it was totally rejected for the next 25 years. During that time I
have made periodic written approaches to the President of the IEE and similar
potentates expressing concern, but to no avail. However, as my reputation
worldwide grew, the resulting difficulty for the IEE and other relevant
learned institutions kept increasing. Still, they have held to their policy,
not even admitted to themselves, to suppress all major advances in the art. Denied information on my work of even decades ago, other
researchers in my specialisms fall further and further behind. They now have
no chance of catching up with me and my team; D. S. Walton and Malcolm
Davidson, so that today we stand totally unchallenged and unexampled.
However, to be such an unnoticed Historical Object gives us no satisfaction. The decades of suppression have increased the divorce between me
and all accredited journal referees for my work, leading to the totally
uncomprehending review of my latest book by Lago in
the oct95 issue of the IEE Electronics & Communication Engineering
Journal. Twenty years earlier, in Wireless World, July79, Lago had attacked our first major dec78 and mar79
publications, on Displacement Current; ".... the articles are wrong in
every detail and it is vital that this should be clearly demonstrated before
undue damage is done." Now he surfaced again with a second attack,
ending with the flourish; ".... this reviewer, after lengthy and careful
consideration, can find virtually nothing of value in this book.". That first important dec78 article in Wireless World was
photocopied by staff and circulated within U.K.A.E.A. Culham,
followed by a meeting there to discuss the situation. The meeting delegated
to B. G. Burrows the task of telephoning Tom Ivall,
Editor of Wireless World. He threatened Ivall that
if he published any more material by Catt et al., Wireless World would be
boycotted by the scientific community. (This is exactly the treatment
previously meted out to the intended publishers of Velikovsky's
first book.) Ivall
should have capitulated. However, he reacted in my favour for two reasons.
Firstly, he had independent means. Secondly, he had spent many hours with me
and many hours with Burrows, and found my technical stature to be no lower
than that of Burrows. Ivall continued to publish
material on my theories every month for the next ten years, making me the
most published and most read suppressed author in history. However, the
reader may not know that if a scientist reads Wireless World (now called
Electronics World) he loses caste, much as you would lose caste if you read
the "Sun". Certainly, before I published in the semi-reputable
Wireless World, I had never read it. Thus, my theories did not reach graduate
engineers and college lecturers by being published in Wireless World. Quite
the reverse. Wireless World was read by technicians, not by engineers, even
though Ivall did not allow such dismal rubbish as
slips into the journal today, for instance page 937, dec96. As the decades drifted by, I continued to fulfil my duty of
attempting to get my work published. I also delved deeper into the theory of
the Politics of Knowledge, or the Sociology of Science. Basil Bernstein, of
the Institute of Education, London, gave me the first clue, which can be
paraphrased as follows; Knowledge is Property,
with its own market value and trading relationships, to be protected by those
who trade in that body of knowledge. It was many more years before I realised that He who brings unsafe new knowledge is a vandal, much as the Nazis who burned the books
were vandals. The reason is that the intrusion of unsafe
new knowledge results in the rejection of the old books. Unsafe new
knowledge has to be defined. New knowledge is unsafe if its acceptance would lead to a change in an A level
syllabus. It is also unsafe
if it would lead to
the change of a first degree syllabus. It is not unsafe if it would merely lead to the addition of an extra
section in a first degree syllabus, leaving the text books untarnished. One has to consider the knowledge broker, or lecturer, with his
slabs of lecture notes. Each slab of notes represents capital which brings in
sixty pounds of income each year from two hours of lecturing. The professional
is unwilling to tear up those notes, or to give up the royalties on his text
book. His text book probably gained his promotion. The professionalisation of teaching in
around 1850, and the merging of research with teaching, set the stage for the
inevitable ossification of science a century later. The professional cannot
afford to allow knowledge to advance. Any attempt to push forward
the bounds of knowledge by paying professionals to do so must fail. Even when
employed specifically to advance knowledge, the professional will freeze it. The existing knowledge
base is the professional's identity, his security, and his income. Unsafe new knowledge
threatens all of these. It took further years for me to realize that the role of the
professional institution was similar to that of the educational
establishment. In the 1970's, when the IEE was obstructing our efforts to
publish and to initiate discussion of fundamentals, we naively assumed that
if only we could get past the 'decadent' officials to the 'vibrant'
membership, all would be well. I am now convinced that this was a delusion,
for the following reasons. Those students who studied, learned, and passed exams in the
IEE's static knowledge base developed subject loyalty and also a vested
interest in its maintenance and defence against unsafe new knowledge. Some had even passed
the IEE's own exams. They now paid their subscriptions to the IEE, not to
encourage it to advance knowledge, but so that it would defend the knowledge
base which was now their
identity and their security. When working at Lucas forty years ago, the manager told me that
the average time a production line girl worked for the company was six weeks.
This made nonsense of the SDP idea of worker participation in management
decisions. We might as well ask British Rail to have its Board meetings on a
platform of Victoria Station and ask the passengers waiting for their trains
to help to make decisions on running the railway system, there and then. Decades later, my son pointed out that the worker's interest was
best served if reinvestment were held to a minimum,
and his company closed down when he took retirement. That way, his income
would be maximised. We can apply the same rule of thumb to the professional
engineer, member of the IEE. My article "The Scientific Reception System as a
Servomechanism", Appendix 2, gives the next stage in the argument. Like the Catholic Church, the IEE paying member would allow the
IEE to sin a little - to allow small increments, or changes in, the knowledge
base. This mirrors the production line worker benefiting from minor
improvements to the existing production line. However, major theoretical
advances must be held up until the IEE paying member retires. At that point,
the bulk of membership would be younger, of an age to want further delay in
the publication of major scientific advance, and so ad infinitum. Thus, the
IEE and its members mirror the conservative stance of the professional
lecturer. Neither benefits from major advance, which would cause short and
medium term damage to his career. The professional engineer has no interest
in major advance in the art. Major advance benefits only; (1) putative future generations of
engineers, who do not yet pay their membership fees to the IEE, and (2) society at
large, which does not pay membership fees to the IEE. The more exposed, and the more absurd, Williams and Secker were
to appear, the more supportive and grateful the IEE membership would be that
they had risked so much to protect and maximise members' careers. In the case of electromagnetism, there was good reason why the
blocking of advance was particularly easy for the official to come to terms
with, without feeling of guilt or compunction. Books on electromagnetism
state that the theory was completed a century ago, and no further advance is
possible or necessary. Thus, the IEE officials knew that any purported
advance was fallacious [But see
http://www.ivorcatt.com/em.htm
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