| Ivor Catt |
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Ivor Catt (born 1935 ) is a British Electronics Engineer known principally for his controversial approach to Electromagnetism . 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). His most recent challenge to the Status Quo in electromagnetism is called "The Catt anomaly". 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 maths from Royal Holloway College , London University . Ivor Catt won a Scholarship to read maths at Trinity College , Cambridge University , but transferred to Engineering . HISTORY The first known article by Ivor Catt explaining his controversial ideas on electromagnetics was published in the British magazine article discussed the similarities between Capacitor s and Transmission Line s, and claimed that all capacitors were, in fact, nothing other than transmission lines {Link without Title} . 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. Catts own explanation of how he became interested in this subject is shown below.
extract from ''Electromagnetic Theory Volume 2'', Ivor Catt, St Albans, 1980, pp. 207-15 - {Link without Title} CATT'S VIEWS ON ELECTROMAGNETISM 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 {Link without Title} . Catt has championed the Heaviside case of ''two conductors'' propagating a slab of Energy Current . 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. {Link without Title} {Link without Title} {Link without Title} 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 {Link without Title} 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. 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, he concludes that charge is gravitationally trapped Energy Current or flow of energy. 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 . 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. Electric current Catt does not see the necessity of electric current (i.e. flow of charge) for the transmission line energy delivery mechanism, except as a slow, resistive, drift in response to the energy-carrying light speed Heaviside energy current. Copper as a dielectric material One of Catt's latest ideas concerns his treatment of copper as a dielectric material with infinite dielectric constant. 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. 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. To prove this, Catt charged up objects of length ''x'' through a resistor to ''v'' volts and measured the discharge, which was a pulse 2''x/c'' seconds long at ''v''/2 volts. The only physical 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. 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. 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. PUBLIC ARGUMENTS 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. He has then used any differing answers to publically lambast all sides and to try to cause disharmony in the ranks and debunk completely the foundations of currently accepted thinking on electromagnetic theory. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) Catt stated in ''Electronics World'' September 2003 issue, "EMC - A Fatally Flawed Discipline" pages 44-52:
This is confirmed on a recent official Ministry of Defence internet site "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 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/4/newsid_2504000/2504155.stm does not blame interference: "The Exocet missile is designed to skim the sea to avoid radar detection." AWARDS Ivor Catt designed the world’s first wafer-scale integration product, a 160 MB solid state memory in 1988, that won Catt the ‘Product of the Year Award’ from the U.S. journals ''Electronic Design'' (on 26 October 1989) and also from ''Electronic Products'' [http://www.ivorcatt.com/3ew.htm (in January 1990), after Sir Clive Sinclair ’s offshoot computer company, Anamartic , invested £16 million. SUPPORT FROM ''ELECTRONICS WORLD'' MAGAZINE EDITORS AND WRITERS Catt has complained bitterly at professional journals refusing to publish his ideas and has effectively accused the establishment of a conspiracy against him: {Link without Title} Dr Arnold Lynch (who designed part of the first programmable computer, that helped defeat Hitler and the Nazis) {Link without Title} 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: {Link without Title} 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. QUOTES ON IVOR CATT
- ''New Scientist'', 12 June 1986, p35;
- Wafers herald new era in computing, ''New Scientist'', 25 February 1989, p75 {Link without Title} .
- Professor Edsger W. Dijkstra, Burroughs Research Fellow {Link without Title}
- ''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 http [http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Td5xa6PBfkQJ:www.iee.org/OnComms/pn/History/HistoryWk_numerical_modelling.pdf+Ivor+Catt&hl=en
– 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:
CURRENT STATUS OF CATT'S IDEAS The current status of Catt's ideas amongst the Establishment is that some of the early ones are only just beginning to be accepted. The scientific and engineering establishments have generally declined to accept his arguments as being worthy of discussion. There are some workers, however, who are now beginning to take up 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 ASSOCIATES/ SUPPORTERS
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Learned Society presented papers
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