4 ms·
I will always upvote Heaviside. This man is responsible for most of the foundation of electrical engineering as it exists today (via and refined by others, espe
by rrss 6y ago
I will always upvote Heaviside. This man is responsible for most of the foundation of electrical engineering as it exists today (via and refined by others, especially those at Bell Labs who recognized the importance of his work). Unfortunately, in my experience, most electrical engineers only know his name as a reference to the step function.
- zwieback 6y agoMEs as well, step function for beam bending. I vaguely remember his name coming up in controls as well where Laplace is popular.
- mhh__ 6y agoThe Heaviside step function probably
- analog31 6y agoI think it's great that the function named after him has a heavy side.
- isitdopamine 6y agoI’ll leave this here: https://me.me/i/barber-what-do-you-want-heaviside-you-heard-of-my-5425960 https://me.me/i/barber-what-do-you-want-heaviside-you-heard-...
- zwieback 6y agoGenius, want to upvote twice!
- jhallenworld 6y agoHeaviside (partial fraction) expansion I think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover-up_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover-up_method
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- afturkrull 6y agoThere's also the "Heaviside Layer" responsible for shortwave radio communication. Heaviside did go a little eccentric in his later years and moved granite furniture into his house.
- ISO-morphism 6y ago> step function As mentioned in the article he wasn't well accepted by academics of the time. A college math professor of mine remarked that the acceptance of naming the step function after him was intentionally demeaning to the rest of his work.
- hilbert42 6y agoYeah, right. ;-) But ultimately those who demeaned Heaviside weren't that successful given that most of his electrical nomenclature has actually stood the test of time and is still used today. It's worth quoting Wiki's list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside): "Electromagnetic terms Heaviside coined the following terms of art in electromagnetic theory: • admittance (reciprocal of impedance) (December 1887); • elastance (reciprocal of permittance, reciprocal of capacitance) (1886); • conductance (real part of admittance, reciprocal of resistance) (September 1885); • electret for the electric analogue of a permanent magnet, or, in other words, any substance that exhibits a quasi-permanent electric polarization (e.g. ferroelectric); • impedance (July 1886); • inductance (February 1886); • permeability (September 1885); • permittance (now called capacitance) and permittivity (June 1887); • reluctance (May 1888)." Methinks that's more than anyone else has done!
- madengr 6y agoInteresting. I’ve been doing RF engineering for 25 years and have never read of permittence and elastance. We usually call it inductive and capacitive susceptance. But yeah, Heaviside did a ton of stuff; I read that aforementioned biography.
- ISO-morphism 5y agoIndeed, and perhaps I should have expanded on the context surrounding that remark. The professor considered Heaviside to be underappreciated and used the story as a lesson on academic and establishment fallibility.
- tigerlily 6y agoSo what did the college professor think of the Dirac delta function?