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Ivor Catt |
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Perhaps the storm in a teacup stirred by Forrest Bishop is a suitable time for an overall analysis. Catt, and later Catt-Walton-Davidson, made major breakthroughs in
Generally, there had already been obvious broadband censorship of advances by all learned journals in the world, and their work was no exception. However, the major advances they completed in around 1970 meant that they had a duty to attempt at least to record their insights for future generations. However, their first move was to hold "profane" seminars on digital design, Digital Hardware Design , to which electronics designers flocked from all over England. The plan was to begin start with benign, profane material, Digital Hardware Design , and then to introduce the sacred aspects of the Catt -Walton-Davidson research, e.g. The Inductor as a Transmission Line after a couple of years of successful seminars. It was thought that companies sending their engineers would take some six months to realise that heresy was being taught and remove their staff from future seminars. But by this time our sacred information would have reached a large public (perhaps 100 electronic engineers). The Catt would be out of the bag. Catt discovered that the cost of manufacturing a book could be covered with the profits from the first seminar, so he became a publishing house, and succeeded in getting their major advances into all the UK copyright libraries. At this point, the duties of Catt, Walton, Davidson were over. Their work could be taken up by a future generation which was less hostile to scientific advance. The seminars were discontinued. However, a parallel effort by Walton and Davidson led to their each publishing routine ("profane") material in a semi-reputable journal, "Wireless World" (now called "Electronics World"). I telephoned the editor, Tom Ivall. I told him that he was heading for trouble because the whole of electronics was rapidly moving over from analog to digital, and he needed the new kind of copy. He had published two authors not knowing they were members of a three man team who would be able to give him a large amount of digital copy. After fifteen minutes, Tom Ivall said; "Can I come and visit you?" This was the response of an editor with a circulation of 60,000 to a cold call from a nobody! A few days later Tom came for the day to my house, bringing his wife with him. Thus began publication of a great deal of our material. Some time later, in discussion with Tom, I said we also had much more controversial material, to which he replied; "Wireless World needs controversial material. I said I verymuch doubted this, but I would send him some. With Walton and Davidson, I shrank some minimal controversial (sacred) material down as much as possible, and submitted Displacement Current to Tom. After the expected delay, I telephoned Tom, and he said he had passed it on to his technical editor Eric Shorter. I replied; "But he has a physics degree. This will create problems." Sure enough, the delay lengthened, with Displacement Current stuck in Eric's "In Tray". After a few more months, I telephoned Tom and announced; "Tomorrow Davidson and I are coming to see you at 10am." Shorter telephoned me two hours later, and said; "I've read your article now, and I like it. We will publish." I replied; "Then we will not come to see you tomorrow." When Displacement Current was published, UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority) Culham distributed copies around the plant, and held a meeting. They delegated to Dr. B G Burrows to telephone Tom Ivall to say that if he published anything more by Catt et al., "Wireless World" would be boycotted by the scientific community. Ivall reacted in an unexpected way. He told me later that he had met both me and Burrows, and my expertise seemed as high as his. Another factor was that Tom had private means, and so could risk his editorial career. Every month for the next ten years, he published articles or letters on our ideas in every monthly issue except two. I tried to achieve wider notice by getting the next article, History of Displacement Current published by a learned journal. The U.K. Inst Phys (Instite of Physics) accepted, but then broke their contract with me to publish. (Later, when studying censorship, Louis Essen FRS told me that Inst Phys also broke its contract with him to publish even after he had received the galleys! He stepped out of line re relativity.) Displacement Current took the lid off Received Electromagnetic Theory. The whole process leading up to Maxwell's Equations was thrown into question. We sat back and waited. Nothing happened. I do not blame myself for waiting. We were not to know that there was no sense of responsibility anywhere within Establishment Science. Had I suspected this, I might have proceeded in the way I actually proceeded with The Catt Question two decades later. Animation . However, this article is so important and interesting that it was very reasonable to assume that it would attract interest. Even now, I wold probably have to use the same approach again, as I did again, for the first many years with The Catt Question . This is one way in which a defunct Establishment is so expensive. We all of us have to start by assuming that at least one of its members will do his job properly. Of course, when the late Dr. Arnold Lynch, Doyen of the UK IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers) did his job properly, he was then blocked by the rest of the crowd. His "error" in writing a paper with me A difficulty in Electromagnetic Theory and then trying to publish it in mainstream IEE is probably why his death passed unremarked by his erstwhile colleagues at the heart of the IEE. Ivor Catt 2nov05
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