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> I don't think a rectangular wave can propagate through the ether :) According to a guy named Fourier, a rectangular wave is really just a bunch of sine waves

• Someone 13y ago
  Totally of topic, but I think it might be interesting and new for some of the HN crowd: both Lagrange and Laplace, not the least of mathematicians, didn't believe that idea when Fourier presented it to the Paris institute. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Fourier.html http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Four...: "[...] a committee consisting of Lagrange, Laplace, Monge and Lacroix was set up to report on the work. Now this memoir is very highly regarded but at the time it caused controversy. There were two reasons for the committee to feel unhappy with the work. The first objection, made by Lagrange and Laplace in 1808, was to Fourier's expansions of functions as trigonometrical series, what we now call Fourier series. Further clarification by Fourier still failed to convince them. As is pointed out in [4]:- All these are written with such exemplary clarity - from a logical as opposed to calligraphic point of view - that their inability to persuade Laplace and Lagrange ... provides a good index of the originality of Fourier's views."