Reflections from Walt

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W2DU:
In response to Don's question about any relationship there might be with the great James Clerk Maxwell--wish I could say there was--but no, it didn't happen.

On research of JCM I found that his real name was James Clerk, of Clerk family (pronounced Clark. He simply chose to add the name Maxwell to his own--it wasn't clear as to why.

Walt

k4kyv:
Quote from: W2DU on January 17, 2011, 03:03:04 PM

...his real name was James Clerk, of Clerk family... He simply chose to add the name Maxwell to his own--it wasn't clear as to why.

Walt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESwtizE0l5U

I always thought those lyrics to be simply whimsical until I learned of a real association between death and a silver hammer. When Pope John Paul II died, a news story described the method used prior to the 20th century to confirm a pope's death: he would be struck on the forehead three times with a silver hammer. (This method was not used with Pope John Paul. According to the Catholic News Service, "This time, instead of the silver hammer, papal doctors used an electrocardiogram to make sure the pope was dead. ")

Regarding JCM, he died of natural causes at a young age.  Had he lived a normal life span, he would have seen the phenomenon predicted by his equations demonstrated as physical fact by Hertz's experiments, and finally the dawn of its practical application with the advent of wireless telecommunication.

I once read somewhere that Maxwell has been considered the third greatest physicist of all time, surpassed only by Newton and Einstein.

Steve - K4HX:
It's interesting to note, the four equations most people know as Maxwell's equations were actually developed by Oliver Heaviside. He utilized vector calculus to reduce the twenty-some equations in Maxwell's original work to the four we know today.

Most of us probably know Heaviside from the Kennelly-Heaviside Layer, Heaviside's theory of an ionized layer above the earth, first proposed in 1902. The existence of the ionosphere was confirmed in the early 1920's.

Heaviside also came up with the ever more popular Poynting vector (independently of Poynting and others), a major element of electromagnetic theory. He also created terms we commonly use now like impedance, inductance, conductance, electret and many others. And he was one of the main developers of transmission line theory.

Where would ham radio be without Maxwell and Heaviside?

aa5wg:
It is wonderful to have Walt here at AMfone.  Further, it is a honor to communicate with one of the Greats!  Thank you sir, Walt, for this rare privilege.
Chuck

W2BX:
Dang!.. this old guy just learned something new!. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

I had no idea of the meaning behind that!  :)

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