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"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so." ? Will Rogers

For 40 years I thought that the problem at the centre of classical electromagnetism arose in around 1890, when Heaviside showed that he was unsure about how to choose between two contradictory models for the Transverse Electromagnetic Wave. Although I quote him as backing ?The Heaviside Signal? [4], the truth is that he vacillated between the two. However, recently I realized that the problem of misinterpretation of experimental results arose much earlier, with Faraday in 1831.

For 43 years it has not been noticed, even by the author, that oscilloscope pictures (reproduced here) undermine the concepts of electric charge and electric current, and with them a large part of 20th century scientific theory. We see two electric currents traveling in opposite directions downa single conductor. Conventional electric current is not fit for the purpose...

Last month, a narrow voltage spike was injected into a printed circuit conductor above a ground plane in the presence of a parallel passive line. Further down the lines it separated out into the faster Odd Mode and the slower Even Mode. Last month I proved mathematically that the earliest, first traces wer not permissible under Faraday's Law...

The speed of an electric current has always been a matter for discussion. This went nowhere while it was not realized that the energy delivered from a battery to a lamp traveled at the speed of light. Traditionally, it involved both electricity and traveling field. Linking this with the idea that electrons traveling at the speed of light would have infinite mass, a crisis for electricity which became clearer with the advent the pulses in digital electronics was evaded for the next half century. Ever more glaring flaws in this misalliance in classical electromagnetism were pointed out during the last thirty years and ignored, culminating in the present very clear, simple exegesis, where two fields of opposite polarity travel together, one with current in one direction down each wire, superposed with the other with current in the opposite direction down the same wire.

Presented to and published by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Professional Group D7 (History of Technology), 26th Weekend Meeting, 10?12 July 1998, University of East Anglia, publication HEE/26

Discussion of some weaknesses in the traditional approach to e.m. theory, and the establishment of a sounder foundation

A major advance in electromagnetic theory, which I shall call the transition from Theory N to Theory H, was made by Oliver Heaviside a century ago. What is proposed here is a transition from Theory H to a third theory, Theory C. It is to be hoped that the response to Theory C will be more perceptive than was the general response to Theory H a century ago?

IEEE Computer Society, 1978, OCLC 35349268

The Information Scientist, 12 (4) December 1978, pp. 137?144

Micro Magazine (July 1969) All the literature treats a transmission line as a series of infinitesimally small inductors and capacitors; this article presents the more realistic approach where at no time do we have to consider infinitesimally small segments of the line.

IEEE Trans. Elect. Comp. 16 (6): 743-763 (1967)