Oddly enough, Heaviside's name has been heard in song by tens of millions of people in recent years. In the musical Cats, every Jellicle Cat hopes to be the on

Oddly enough, Heaviside's name has been heard in song by tens of millions of people in recent years. In the musical Cats, every Jellicle Cat hopes to be the one chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer. This may be a metaphorical place in the play, but it is also an actual layer of the ionosphere. Oliver Heaviside and Arthur Kennelly (working independently) predicted its existence in 1902, and it was confirmed in 1924 by Edward Appleton. Cats is based on the 1939 book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. Shortwave radio was a big deal at the time, and anything to do with radio signals and propagation caught the public's attention. Today, the Heaviside Layer is known as the E layer, and is much beloved by amateur radio operators for its unpredictable propagation known as "sporadic E skip". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_lay... https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Heaviside_Layer https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Heaviside_Layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Possum%27s_Book_of_Practical_Cats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Possum%27s_Book_of_Practic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation