- Ivor Catt
Ivor Catt (born 1935) is a British
electronics engineer known principally for his alternative theories ofelectromagnetism . He received a B.A. degree fromCambridge University , and has won two major product awards for his innovative computer chip designs.Biography
Ivor Catt was born in
England and grew up on an RAF airbase inSingapore . [http://www.ivorcatt.com/2951.htm , accessed 1 August 2007] He left the country, along with his mother, just before the Japanese invasion in 1942. He did his National Service stationed in Germany. He won a scholarship to read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge University, but transferred to engineering.Wafer scale integration
Catt developed and patented some ideas on "
Wafer scale integration " (WSI) in 1972, and published his work in "Wireless World " in 1981, after his articles on the topic were rejected by academic journals.cite news| last = Schofield| first = Jack| title = Computer Guardian (Microfile): Catt's back| work =The Guardian | date = 1989-02-16| accessdate = 2008-04-04] The technique, christened "Catt Spiral", was designed to enable the use of partially faultyintegrated chips (called "partials"), which were otherwise discarded by manufacturers.cite journal| last = Cook| first = Nigel| title = Air Traffic Control: How many more air disasters?| journal = Electronics World| year= 2003| month = January |url = http://www.ivorcatt.com/3ew.htm| accessdate = 2008-04-04]In mid-1980s, a British company "Anamartic", funded by
Tandem Computers and Sir Clive Sinclair among others, announced plans to manufacture microchips ("superchips") based on Catt's technology.cite news| last = Matthews| first = Robert| title = Breakthrough for British microchip; Anamartic; Wafer scale integration| work =The Times (London) | date = 1988-08-09| accessdate = 2008-04-04] cite video| title = BBC Micro Live News| year2 = 1985| publisher =British Broadcasting Corporation | url = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii0I2i_yWMc | accessdate = 2008-04-04] The approach was reported to be revolutionary at the time, with predictions that it would enable construction of powerful super-computers from cheap, mass produced components, and cheaper and faster replacements for magnetic disk memories.cite news| last = Matthews| first = Robert|title = A first for UK; Supercomputers; Technology| work =The Times (London) | date = 1989-02-09| accessdate = 2008-04-04] Anamartic introduced a solid-state memory, called the Wafer Stack, based on the technology in 1989 and the device won "Electronic Product"'s ‘Product of the Year Award’. However the company could not ensure a large enough supply of silicon wafers, which were crucial for its chip manufacturing, and folded in 1992.cite news| last = Morgan| first = Oliver| coauthors = Day, Timon and Grant, Richard| title = Chip wars - Rival British world-beaters in battle for supremacy| work = Mail on Sunday, London | date = 1995-10-08| accessdate = 2008-04-04] In the following years, other company including "Memory Corporation" and "Syntaq" tried to revive and further develop Catt's ideas on WSI.Writings and opinions
On electromagnetism
Catt argues that much of mainstream electromagnetism is wrong: Catt does not admit the existence of
electric charge as a fundamental entity and he claims that all charge is composed of trappedHeaviside energy current. He argues thatcapacitance andinductance are fictional, being artifacts of transmission-line effects in the devices; thatdisplacement current is not needed to explain capacitor operation. As opposed to normalelectric current (flow of charge), Catt usesenergy 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, but states that simply asking the question proves 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.On industrial management
Catt spent six years in the 1960s working in five different electronic companies in the
USA . He was very disillusioned by his experience and wrote a harsh critique of American management practices in his book, "The Catt Concept: The New Industrial Darwinism". Catt was critical of thehire and fire culture, which he labeled the "New Social Darwinism", and accused American employers of stifling their workers' creativity.cite book| last = Catt| first = Ivor| title = The Catt Concept: The New Industrial Darwinism| publisher = Putnam Publ.| year = 1971| isbn = 0906340152] The book got largely negative reviews, withKirkus Reviews describing it as a contrived and often muddled work that rested on "one man's bitter and limited experience."cite journal| title = Review - The Catt Concept: The New Industrial Darwinism | date = 1971-10-01| journal =Kirkus Reviews ]On the English justice system
In Catt's view the English justice system is heading to a collapse. He assigns the blame to
Lord Denning , who according to Catt replaced the rule of law by desire for equity, ethics and righteousness. Catt also accuses radical feminists and anti-social women of causing the disintegration of the justice system and reducing divorced fathers tohelots , through their control of the media and the courts.cite book| last = Catt| first = Ivor| title = The Hook and the Sting: The Legal Mafia| publisher = Westfields| year = 1996|url = http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/w92hs2.htm| isbn = 0906340098] cite news| last = Catt| first = Ivor| title = Bashing but no blood (letter to the editor)| work =The Sunday Times | date = 1994-07-03|accessdate = 2008-04-04] cite news| last = Catt| first = Ivor| title = Popular justice (letter to the editor)| work =The Times | date = 2004-08-30|accessdate = 2008-04-04] Catt discusses his views on the issue in his self-published book, "The Hook and the Sting: The Legal Mafia".Current status of Catt's ideas
Catt's paper '
Crosstalk (Noise) in Digital Systems,' in "IEEE Trans. on Elect. Comp.," vol. EC-16 (Dec 1967) pp. 749-58 [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4039191] has so far received 44 scholarly citations [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=7347728401648293569] , while two other popular papers written by Ivor Catt received 81 [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=15905607118324963335] and 22 [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=13335691372789325884] scholarly citations, respectively.The view of Catt's ideas by mainstream physicists is that his earlier work on digital logic circuits is of value, but his later ideas about electromagnetism are incorrect. This status is reflected in Catt's absence from standard undergraduate and graduate textbooks on electrodynamics [J.D. Jackson, Classical electrodynamics, ISBN 0-471-30932-X] , quantum mechanics [Eisberg & Resnick, Quantum Physics, ISBN 047187373X] , materials science, or solid-state physics.
Because Catt's views have been expressed mainly in popular-press articles, self-published books, and on informal Internet forums, mainstream physicists view Catt's ideas, to the extent that they have heard of them, as
pseudophysics . 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 "skillful manipulation of meaningless symbols") means that, in the conventional view, his work is out of the scope of conventional physics and cannot make reliable predictions to compare to experiments.Catt claims that there are some workers who are beginning to re-evaluate his ideas on the transmission-line representation of the capacitor in order to achieve better modelling of these components.Catt also claimed disastrous consequences of what he calls censorship (by which he means, scientific journals ignoring his theories) in an article in "Electronics World" September 2003 issue, 'EMC - A Fatally Flawed Discipline' pages 44-52:
"... during the
Falklands War , the British warshipHMS 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."His work has received coverage and debate in the magazines "Wireless World" and "Electronics World" from December 1978 to September 1988, also see [http://www.ivorcatt.com/3ew.htm] . The "New Scientist" on 19 February 1989 stated that Catt proposed an electronic internet to share ideas and circumvent bigoted censorship [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12416924.800-forum-on-the-importance-of-being-creative--innovativethinkers-should-be-allowed-to-come-to-the-fore-.html] :
Selected bibliography
Books
* "The Catt Concept: The New Industrial Darwinism" , Putnam, 1971, ISBN 0906340152
* "Computer Worship", Pitman Publ., 1973 ISBN 0273002430
* "Digital Hardware Design" (with David Walton, Malcolm Davidson), Macmillan, 1979, ISBN 0333259815Self-Published
* "Electromagnetic Theory", C.A.M. Pub., 1983, ISBN 0906340039
* "Death of Electric Current: Wireless World Articles and Letters", C.A.M. Pub., 1987, ISBN 0906340063
* "The Catt Anomaly: Science Beyond the Crossroads", Westfields, 2001, ISBN 0906340152
* "The Hook and the Sting: The Legal Mafia", Westfields, 1996, 1996, ISBN 0906340098Articles by Ivor Catt
* Lynch, Arnold and Ivor Catt, "A Difficulty in Electromagnetic Theory," 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 [http://www.iee.org/oncomms/pn/history/hot_conf_index.pdf]
* Catt, I. "The Two T.E.M. Signals", IEEE Computer Society, 1978, OCLC 35349268
* Catt, I. "The Rise and Fall of Bodies of Knowledge", "The Information Scientist", 12 (4) December 1978, pp. 137-144 [http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ipub002a.htm]
* Catt, I., Davidson, M., Walton, D.S.,"The history of displacement current," "Wireless World", March 1979
* Catt, I., Davidson, M., Walton, D.S., "Displacement current", "Wireless World", December 1978
*Catt, I., 'Crosstalk (Noise) in Digital Systems,' "IEEE Trans. on Elect. Comp.," vol. EC-16 (Dec 1967) pp. 749-58 [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4039191] .Articles Referring to Ivor Catt
* Cook, Nigel, "Air traffic control: how many more air disasters?", "Electronics World", January 2003, pp. 12-17 [http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/]
* Firth, Howard, "Forum: On the importance of being creative - Innovative thinkers should be allowed to come to the fore", "New Scientist", 25 November 1989 [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12416924.800-forum-on-the-importance-of-being-creative--innovativethinkers-should-be-allowed-to-come-to-the-fore-.html]References
External links
* [http://www.ivorcatt.org/ Ivor Catt's latest website, with 1970s books and articles]
* [http://www.ivorcatt.com/ Ivor Catt's earlier website]
* [http://www.ivorcatt.com/2813.htm Dr. Neil McEwan's explanation of "Catt anomaly"]
* [http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/catanoi.htm/ The Catt Anomaly]
* [http://www.ivorcatt.com/3ew.htm Air Traffic Control report]
* putative [http://feynman137.tripod.com/ error in Maxwell's equations] corrected (with minor reference to Catt's work)
* Nigel Cook discussion of [http://www.wbabin.net/physics/cook.htm Maxwell, Heaviside and Catt theory]
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