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After the Wikipedia entry, you will find comments and corrections by Ivor Catt in red.
Wikipedia on 21feb07;
Ivor Catt (born 1935) is a British electronics
engineer known principally for his controversial approach to
electromagnetism. 1 He
received B.Eng. degree from Cambridge University, and has won two major
product awards for his innovative computer chip designs (see Awards section
below).
2 His most recent
challenge to the status quo in electromagnetism is called "The Catt
anomaly".
....
....
3 Early life and family
history
Ivor Catt in 1942, aged 7, was in Singapore when
the Japanese began their invasion. He was on one of the last four boats to
leave (two of which were sunk) while the Japanese were doing their
preliminary bombardment. His father, Sidney Catt, was in charge of
electronics on the RAF airbase, and was captured and made a POW. His mother
won the top honors in mathematics from Royal
Holloway College, London University. Ivor Catt won
a scholarship to read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge University,
but transferred to engineering.
[edit] History
The first known article by Ivor Catt explaining his
controversial ideas on electromagnetics was
published in the British magazine Wireless World in 1978, although he had
earlier written an article in New Scientist about computing problems [1]. The
Wireless World article discussed the similarities between capacitors and
transmission lines, and claimed that all capacitors were, in fact, nothing
other than transmission lines [2]. Catt claimed to have discovered this based
on his work on high speed logic systems while working for Motorola, Phoenix,
USA in the late 1960s. Catt's own explanation of how he became interested in
this subject is shown below.
Illustration from the 1978 Wireless World paper (see Wireless World copyright
notes on image).I entered the computer industry when I joined Ferranti (now
ICL) in West Gorton, Manchester, in 1959. I worked on the SIRIUS computer.
When the memory was increased from 1,000 words to a maximum of 10,000 words
in increments of 3,000 by the addition of three free-standing cabinets, there
was trouble when the logic signals from the central processor to
free-standing cabinets were all crowded together in a cableform
3 yards long. ... Sirius was the first transistorised machine, and mutual
inductance would not have been significant in previous thermionic valve
machines...In 1964 I went to Motorola to research into the problem of
interconnecting very fast (1 ns) logic gates ... we delivered a working
partially populated prototype high speed memory of 64 words, 8 bits/word, 20
ns access time. ... I developed theories to use in my work, which are
outlined in my IEEE Dec 1967 article (EC-16, n6) ... In late 1975, Dr David
Walton became acquainted ... I said that a high capacitance capacitor was
merely a low capacitance capacitor with more added. Walton then suggested a
capacitor was a transmission line. Malcolm Davidson ... said that an RC
waveform [Maxwell’s continuous ‘extra current’ for the capacitor, the only
original insight Maxwell made to EM] should be ... built up from little
steps, illustrating the validity of the transmission line model for a
capacitor [charging/discharging]. (This model was later published in Wireless
World in Dec 78.)’-
extract from Electromagnetic Theory Volume 2, Ivor
Catt, St Albans, 1980, pp. 207-15 - [3]
[edit] Catt's views on electromagnetism
[edit] Capacitors and displacement current
Catt's work on equating capacitors to transmission lines came as a result of
his work in trying to provide adequate fast decoupling to the power supplies
for very fast (sub nanosecond rise time) logic circuits at Motorola. He was
apparently one of the first people to realise that parallel power planes (in
common use today) acted more like transmission lines than capacitors. From
this realisation he developed his equivalence theory. Following on from this,
he claims that Maxwell's displacement current term is not in fact needed to
explain capacitor operation because displacement current is not needed in a
transmission line.
However, the article is highly indicative and suggestive of stepwise charging
of capacitors [4]. Catt has championed the Heaviside case of two conductors
propagating a slab of energy current.
4 Another part of Catt's
thinking on capacitors was that they do not contain any internal ESL and that
the ESR quoted by manufacturers is simply the characteristic impedance of the
TL formed by the capacitor plates. These ideas have to some extent gained
credence in the high frequency modelling of chip capacitors, where the
transmission line model appears to give closer representation than the RLC
model.[5] [6] [7]
5 [edit] Nature of the
electron
Catt suggests that the electron is a standing wave or trapped Heaviside
energy current. Ivor Catt found problems with
Maxwell's view but solved them by proving that a pair of wires is a
capacitor, in IEEE Trans. EC-16, 1967, and Proc. IEE, June 83 & June 87,
also in book Digital Hardware Design, Macmillan 1979 now free on line at [8]
[edit] Inductors
Later, Catt claimed (along with his associates), that inductors too
could be thought of as transmission lines. The derivation is more complex
than the capacitor case and involves consideration of the "odd" and
"even" modes of EM propagation in an inductor. Catt claims to have
proved the equivalence for one and two turn inductors. It was peer-reviewed
and published without objection in Proc. IEE, June 1987. [Two articles. Proc. IEEE June 1983
and Proc. IEEE
June 1987 .]
[edit] Transmission lines
Catt claims that most components act like transmission lines. He claims that
a charged transmission line is similar to a capacitor and says that pulses
become trapped inside open circuit lines travelling from end to end at the
speed of propagation in the medium. He agrees that they cannot be detected
but insists that they are there, based on the argument that EM waves cannot
be slowed down or stopped. Since EM waves have been used to charge the
transmission line, his argument goes, they must
still be present continually reciprocating (as he puts it). From this
postulate, and the one about no current or charge, 6 he concludes that charge is gravitationally
trapped energy current or flow of energy.
[edit] Energy current
As opposed to normal current (flow of charge), Catt uses energy current to
describe most effects. This is a flow of energy defined by the Poynting vector (E×H). Energy current was originally postulatd by Oliver Heaviside.
[edit] Charge
Catt does not admit the existence of electric charge as a fundamental entity
and he claims that all charge is composed of trapped Heaviside energy
current.
[edit] Electric current
Catt does not see the necessity of electric current (i.e. flow of charge) for
the transmission line energy delivery mechanism, 7 except as a slow, resistive, drift in response to the
energy-carrying light speed Heaviside energy current.
[edit] Copper as a dielectric material
One of Catt's latest ideas concerns his treatment of copper as a
dielectric material with infinite dielectric constant.
[edit] The Catt anomaly
The "Catt anomaly", relates to a parallel twin-conductor
transmission line. When a step electromagnetic wave travels from left to
right, he asks, "Where does the charge on the bottom (return) conductor
come from?" He proceeds to say that it cannot come from anywhere due to
the limitation on the speed of charge carriers in the conductors or
dielectric.
The subtext of his argument here seems to be that charge from the
conductors is not necessary for the transmission of EM waves in transmission
lines. 8 The electric field
carrying the energy precedes and causes subsequent electron drift current,
but the field is not itself charge, but rather Heaviside "energy
current", light speed electromagnetic energy.
Catt in his article "Waves in Space", Wireless World March 1983,
gives a clear experimental demonstration that the energy stored in a charged
object never slows down. Because equal Heaviside energy currents are flowing
in each opposite direction in a charged object, there is no net magnetic
field and no electron drift current or resistance resulting therefrom. 9 To
prove this, Catt charged up objects of length x through a resistor to v volts
and measured the discharge, which was a pulse 2x/c seconds long at v/2 volts.
His explanation is that in a static charge, energy is flowing equally in each
direction. When discharged, the energy already going towards the discharge
point exits first, while the remainder (initially going the wrong way) goes
to the other end of the conductor, reflects back via the bound end electron,
and exits subsequently.
10 [edit] Electron spin
In March 1979, Catt, Walton, and Davidson published another article in
Wireless World.
Catt claimed to have solved the paradox of electron spin by saying an
electron is a trapped Heaviside energy current. His theory implies that
gravitation traps the energy, like the bending of light by gravity. He then
predicted that the size of the electron is then similar to a black-hole, far
smaller than the Planck size suggested by "string theory". To test
this, the gravity strength resulting from Catt's work can be calculated, and
it appears correct.
[edit] Digital logic
Catt has a long-standing dispute about "exclusive-or" in Boolean
algebra. He has noted that "and", "or",
"exclusive-or" (and their inverses) are the six functions out of
the 16 possible functions of two Boolean inputs for which A op B is the same
as B op A. Catt calls this "symmetric", and complains that Boolean
algebra deals with "and" and "or" and ignores
"ex-or". He appears to have been arguing this since his IC design
days, when he apparently failed to convince his boss of the business case for
having an EXOR function in the product range. In all this time Catt appears
not to have seen that De Morgan's Laws state that a "positive-logic
AND" is a "negative-logic OR" and vice versa.
[edit] Public arguments
[edit] Electromagnetics
Ivor Catt has achieved some notoriety in the
British electrical and electronics establishment by trying to get eminent
professors in electrical engineering or electromagnetics
such as Dr Neil McEwan (Reader in Electromagnetics, Bradford university) and Professor M.
Pepper (University) to comment on the Catt anomaly. 11 He has then used any differing answers to
publicly lambast all sides and to try to cause disharmony in the ranks and
debunk completely the foundations of currently accepted thinking on
electromagnetic theory.
[edit] Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)
Catt stated in Electronics World September 2003 issue, "EMC - A Fatally
Flawed Discipline" pages 44-52: "during
the Falklands War, the British warship HMS Sheffield had to switch off its
radar looking for incoming missiles ... This is why it did not see incoming Exocet missiles, and you know the rest. How was it that
after decades of pouring money into the EMC community, this could happen ...
that community has gone into limbo, sucking in money but evading the real
problems, like watching for missiles while you talk to HQ."
This is confirmed on a recent official Ministry of Defence internet site
[9]: "Mutual Interference between the SATCOM and EW systems onboard HMS
Sheffield resulted in the inability to detect an incoming Exocet
missile during the Falklands war resulting in the loss of the ship and the
lives of 20 sailors." However the BBC report [10] does not blame
interference: "The Exocet missile is designed
to skim the sea to avoid radar detection."
[edit] Awards
Ivor Catt inspired the design of the world’s first
wafer-scale integration product, a 160 MB solid state memory in 1988, that
won Sinclair's spin-off, Anamartic, the‘Product of the Year Award’ from the U.S. journals
Electronic Design [11] (on 26 October 1989) and also from Electronic Products
[12] (in January 1990), after Sir Clive Sinclair’s offshoot computer company,
Anamartic, invested £16 million.
[edit] Support from Electronics World magazine editors and writers
12 Catt has complained
bitterly at professional journals refusing to publish his ideas and has
effectively accused the establishment of a conspiracy against him: [13]
Dr Arnold Lynch (who designed part of the first programmable computer,
that helped defeat Hitler and the Nazis) [14] supported Catt and corresponded
with Nigel Cook from 1996-2001, while the latter was publishing the
peer-reviewed journal Science World (ISSN 1367-6172).
In 1998 Lynch succeeded in pushing the Catt Anomaly into an IEE meeting
and publication: [15] In consequence, Electronics World editors Martin Eccles
and Phil Reed began publishing articles about Catt's work and later Catt's
own articles. The material from Catt's co-authors and acolytes in Electronics
World (such as Cook) focusses on the modification
to Maxwell's equations introduced by treating the capacitor as a transmission
line, and related errors in Maxwell's model for light, unified
electromagnetism, and so on.
[edit] War of words with New Scientist magazine
Ivor Catt has engaged in a war of words with the
current editor of New Scientist Jeremy Webb [16] and its previous editor
[17].
[edit] Quotes on Ivor Catt
"Depending on who you talk to in the generally conservative
semiconductor industry, Catt is either a crank or a visionary. ..."
- New Scientist, 12 June 1986, p35;
"Ivor Catt [is] an innovative thinker whose
own immense ability in electronics has all too often been too far ahead of
conventional ideas to be appreciated..."
- Wafers herald new era in computing, New Scientist, 25 February 1989, p75[18].
"By virtue of his involvement, Catt knows all the ins and outs of one
of the major scientific scandals of the last 15 years, viz. the systematic
suppression in the world of electronics of all publications about the
phenomenon of the so-called glitch and its ramifications."
- Professor Edsger W. Dijkstra,
Burroughs Research Fellow [19]
"There was a realisation in the mid 1970s that a capacitor was in
fact a transmission line ... Catt, attempting to bypass
what he felt were erroneous interpretations, based everything on those
concepts first proposed by Heaviside. The price that must be paid for this is
computational complexity as the treatment is distributed in space.
Nevertheless, his formulations of propagating TEM waves involve a network
which looks identical to what we now call a two-dimensional
series TLM mesh … Both Johns and Catt provide numerical modelling
systems which are based on the use of electrical networks to treat
electromagnetic analogues of physical problems. … The approaches of Johns and
Catt provide a firm basis for the rules that are applied and once this is
clear, then it is possible to intrude into that 'what-if' land (what if we
relax some of the strict electromagnetics rules?)
and research of this nature is in progress at this moment."
- Some insights into the history of numerical modelling, by D. de Cogan,
School of Information Systems, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ,
recent IEE paper: PDF[20], http [21]
The Sinclair team has developed the ideas of a British inventor, Ivor Catt, who tried to get British firms to listen to
him. On that point this newspaper must admit to the British disease – we
didn’t have the bottle to write about Catt then, in part because the
technological establishment dismissed his notions. On the risk front,
Sinclair has tackled, via Catt, the fundamental breakthrough of the microchip
business. ... A whole new range of opportunities for computer use come
forward.
– Hamish McRae, The Guardian, 13 March 1985, p23
The Nobel Laureate Dr Gerardus 't Hooft, who won the prize in 1999 for work on electroweak
gauge theory, stated recently:
Please remove me from this list. I don't want my in-box to be polluted by
all this nonsense about Maxwell's equations. The Maxwell equations correctly
describe the propagation of signals as well as the conservation of charge in
capacitors, period. Keep me out of any further discussions. [22]
[edit] Current status of Catt's ideas
The view of Catt's ideas by conventional physicists is that his earlier work
on digital logic circuits is of value, but his later ideas about
electromagnetism are of no use. The scientific and engineering establishments
have generally declined to accept his arguments as being worthy of
discussion, since (in the view of conventional physics) a hundred years of
experimental work shows that Maxwell's equations are well validated in the
real world, and do not need to be "corrected." In particular, the
fact that Catt's views are not expressed in compact mathematical form (Catt's
view is that the use of mathematics in physics is 20 "skillful
manipulation of meaningless symbols") means that, in the conventional
view, his work is out of the scope of conventional physics. Outside of the
mainstream of physics, however, there are some workers who are beginning to
re-evaluate Catt's ideas on the transmission-line representation of the
capacitor in order to achieve better modelling of these components. His ideas
on displacement current, electric charge, electric current, etc. still have
not been accepted by mainstream workers.
Catt's view that electrons do not carry electrical charge seems to be
inconsistent with the well-observed physics of the operation of such devices
as the space charge limited operation of Vacuum tubes or ion engines, the MOS
field-effect transistor, the CCD array or even the Cathode Ray Tube, or more
modern devices such as Single-electron transistors, all of which seem to be
operate perfectly well using physical principles that Catt discards.
[edit] Catt's associates/ supporters
Dr. D.S. Walton
Dr. Arnold Lynch
Mr. Malcolm Davidson
[edit] Publications and references
[edit] Articles
Displacement current and how to get rid of it ("how to get rid of
it" was put in without Catt's knowledge or consent by Wireless World
editor Ivall)
The history of displacement current. Catt, Walton and Davidson, Wireless
World, March 1979
The death of electric current (Catt shows that Heaviside energy current
carries the energy of electricity, and at light speeds it sets up the field
for subsequent electron drift)
The Catt Anomaly
Maxwell's equations revisited - A critique of orthodox electromagnetic
theory, Wireless World, March 1980, pp78,78
[edit] Learned Society presented papers
A Difficulty in Electromagnetic Theory By Dr Arnold Lynch and Mr Ivor Catt Presented to, and Published by, the Institution
of Electrical Engineers, Professional Group D7 (History of Technology), 26th
Weekend Meeting, 10-12 July 1998, University of East Anglia, publication
HEE/26:
I. Catt, 'Crosstalk (Noise) in Digital Systems,' in IEEE Trans. on Elect.
Comp., vol. EC-16 (Dec 1967) pp749-58. Also papers proving that the inductor
and transformer are really transmission lines like capacitors, published in
Proc. IEE, June 83 & June 87
[edit] See also
Twin capacitor paradox
[edit] External links
Ivor Catt's latest website, with 1970s books and
articles
Ivor Catt's earlier website
Dr. Neil McEwan's explanation of "Catt
anomaly"
The Catt Anomaly
Air Traffic Control report
Error in Maxwell's equations corrected using Catt's work
History of Maxwell, Heaviside and Catt theory
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Catt"
Categories: 1935 births | Living people | British engineers | Electronics
engineers
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@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Comments and corrections by Ivor Catt.
1
"He received B.Eng. degree from Cambridge University"....Actually
BA, which converted to MA on payment of a fee of £6. Cambridge did not have a
B. Eng.
2
"His most recent challenge to the status quo in electromagnetism is
called "The Catt anomaly"." ....
Now called "The Catt Question"
3 "Early
life and family history
Ivor Catt in 1942, aged 7, was in Singapore when
the Japanese began their invasion. He was on one of the last four boats to
leave (two of which were sunk) while the Japanese were doing their
preliminary bombardment. His father, Sydney
[Ernest] Catt , was in charge of electronics on the RAF airbase, and was
captured and made a POW. [See his autobiography.] His
mother (Enid Mary Catt nee Jones) won the top honors
in mathematics from Royal Holloway College, London University. Ivor Catt won a scholarship to read mathematics at
Trinity College, Cambridge University, but transferred to engineering." .... Ivor was aged 6. He left Singapore two weeks before it
fell to the Japanese. Our two boats left, and then the last two (one of which
was sunk) left Singapore. This information about escaping boats is in my
memory, and I have not read documents about it. Enid Mary Catt (nee Jones)
gained the Lubbock Prize for Applied Mathematics in London University in 1924
when aged 20, and also excelled in 1925. At age 17, Ivor
Catt won a State Scholarship (there were 2,000 that year), which helped him
to get into Trinity . "The first known article by Ivor Catt explaining his controversial ideas on electromagnetics was published in the British magazine
Wireless World in 1978," .... "Displacement
Current"
4
"Another part of Catt's thinking on capacitors was that they do not
contain any internal ESL and that the ESR quoted by manufacturers is simply
the characteristic impedance of the TL formed by the capacitor plates." ....
This is muddled. The term ESL was unknown to me until today (21feb07). Catt
has never made an assertion about ESR. As to ESL, Catt says that the series
inductance of a capacitor (now apparently called ESL) is no more than the
loop inductance of the capacitor's leads. ESR and ESL have nothing to do with
the characteristic impedance presented by the parallel capacitor plates.
5
"Nature of the electron
Catt suggests that the electron is a standing wave or trapped Heaviside
energy current. Ivor Catt found problems with
Maxwell's view but solved them by proving that a pair of wires is a
capacitor, in IEEE Trans. EC-16, 1967, and Proc. IEE, June 83 & June 87,
also in book Digital Hardware Design, Macmillan 1979 now free on line at
[8]" .... Untrue. Catt only speculates on the nature of the
electron once, in his on-line book Electromagnetics 1 , under the
title "The electron". This develops from charging two concentric
spheres and then changing their radius to zero and infinity. Speculative.
Speculation about gravity follows. As to "a pair of wires in a
capacitor", that comment is strange.
6
"he concludes that charge is gravitationally trapped energy current or
flow of energy." ....
Untrue. I merely speculate that the electron , if it exists, may be formed by a localised
vortex of TEM Waves.
7
"except as a slow, resistive, drift in response to the energy-carrying
light speed Heaviside energy current." .... This false caveat should
be removed. Then what went before becomes correct.
8
"The electric field carrying the energy precedes and causes subsequent
electron drift current, but the field is not itself charge, but rather
Heaviside "energy current", light speed electromagnetic
energy." Untrue. Catt does not have any electron current. His
"Theory C" is that when battery lights lamp, "electron .... current" is not involved.
9 "To
prove this, Catt charged up objects of length x through a resistor to v volts
and measured the discharge, which was a pulse 2x/c seconds long at v/2
volts." Catt did not prove this. He merely recommends reading the
application note for the Tektronix 109 Reed Relay Pulse Generator, which
states that a one metre coax charged up to 10v delivers a pulse 2m wide and
5v high. (Catt here writes from memory about the Tek
brochure. However, Catt used this pulse generator a great deal in the 1960s,
and is very familiar with its performance.)
10
"[edit] Electron spin
In March 1979, Catt, Walton, and Davidson published another article in
Wireless World. Catt claimed to have solved the paradox of electron spin by
saying an electron is a trapped Heaviside energy current. His theory implies
that gravitation traps the energy, like the bending of light by gravity. He
then predicted that the size of the electron is then similar to a black-hole,
far smaller than the Planck size suggested by "string theory". To
test this, the gravity strength resulting from Catt's work can be calculated,
and it appears correct."
....The
March 1979 article does not mention electron spin. I never predicted the aize of the electron, and I
never discuss electron spin.
11
"He has then used any differing answers" .... A strange way of
describing developments over "The Catt Question". After
having all attempts to publish on fundamental electromagnetic theory rejected
for publication for thirty years by all learned journals in the world, Catt
jettisoned his own theories and asked to learn the classical theory which was
said to have reached perfection a hundred years before. His first question
was "The Catt Question" . It took many years to
elicit any reply whatsoever from any accredited expert, but finally two such
totally contradicted each other. It is extraordinarily mealy-mouthed to
describe the process as "He has then used any differing answers to
publicly lambast all sides and to try to cause disharmony in the ranks and
debunk completely the foundations of currently accepted thinking on
electromagnetic theory." Does the Wikipedia writer really have no grasp
of the unprecedented, historic development demonstrated in the dialogue
with Lord Rees?
12 Catt has complained bitterly at professional journals refusing to
publish his ideas and has effectively accused the establishment of a
conspiracy against him: Never. Catt's behavioural model is There is usually no
conspiracy to suppress heretical ideas. There is no need of one, except in
some specific instances, because as Charles McCutcheon wrote in the New
Scientist (itself a notorious suppressor, but not as bad as Nature) on 29
April 1976, p225, "An evolved conspiracy" suffices.
20 (Catt's view is that the use of mathematics in physics is "skillful manipulation of meaningless symbols").
This is not a quote from Catt. For one thing, Catt's spelling is better than
this. For another, like Heaviside, although highly critical of the epidemic
of destructive use of dubious mathematics in physics, for instance in Maxwell's
Equations he uses a great deal of valid mathematics himself.
Ivor Catt
22feb07/13july07
@@@@@@@@@@@@@
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Catt 5 Februaary 2013
....
Writings
and opinions
[edit] On electromagnetism
Catt argues that much of
mainstream electromagnetism is wrong: Catt does not entertain the existence
of electric charge as a fundamental entity and he
claims that all charge is composed of trapped Heaviside energy
current. He argues that capacitance and inductance
are fictional, being artifacts of the transmission-line nature of the
devices; that displacement current is not needed to
explain capacitor operation. As opposed to normal electric
current (flow of charge), Catt uses energy
current to describe most effects.
Catt illustrates this with the
"Catt anomaly". When a step electromagnetic wave travels from
left to right in a parallel twin-conductor transmission line, he asks,
"Where does the charge on the bottom (return) conductor come from?"
He does not answer that question himself, but uses conflicts in others'
responses to conclude that conventional electrodynamics must be false. The
subtext of his argument here seems to be that charge from the conductors is
not necessary for the transmission of EM waves in transmission lines. The electric
field carrying the energy precedes and causes subsequent electron drift
current, but the field is not itself charge, but rather Heaviside
"energy current", light speed electromagnetic energy.
Catt has no experimental evidence to confirm or deny the theories he has
questioned, so his ideas must be regarded as speculative only. According a
source,[who?]
the existence of the modern world of electronics provides abundant evidence
that his statements[which?]
are wrong
[ http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/965.htm
]
....
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