anyone heard of Ivor Catt ?

[siliconmix]

http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/
here's his website.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Used to get a lot of column inches in Wireless World letters pages - can't tell if he's a genius or a nutter.

[siliconmix]

same here.interesting bloke none the less .he sorted out the problem of sinclairs silcon wafers.

[vk6zgo]

Way back when men were men,& "Wireless World" hadn't changed it's name & turned into a poncy computer mag,dear old Ivor used to write quirky articles,challenging people's preconceptions on Electronics.
This of course,generated a lot of correspondence,either agreeing or dissenting.
One such discussion was hilarious,with several correspondents adopting the pseudonyms of "Weever-Mowse" & "Ouida Dogg".
It was the sort of inspired lunacy that the Brits do so well,albeit about a technical subject'
The sight of Ivor Catt's name started me chuckling immediately,after all these years.

VK6ZGO

[siliconmix]

i like him because he introduced me to  oliver heaviside a hero of mine 

[Uncle Vernon]

It was the sort of inspired lunacy that the Brits do so well

Beano?

[vk6zgo]

No Unc,the Poms don't do kid's stuff well at all ,in my opinion.
This is a bit more adult,like Monty Python.

It's funny though,looking back,how cruddy the Brit kids TV shows,in particular, were.
There was Andy Pandy  doing something incredibly boring,whilst a condescending Narrator told us everything  that he was doing.
By contrast,the local offerings, "Adventure Island" & "The Magic Circle Club" were brilliantly done by John Michael Howson & that other bloke I can never remember.
They were way too expensive to make & were eventually canned.
OK,the Poms did do some shows well,"Bill & Ben" weren't that bad,even though they had a Narrator.
They were pretty much blown out of the water by 'Sesame Street",& the Aussie version of "Playschool" (Nonie & Benita in their prime---No! I'd better not go there!).
Of course,I wasn't a kid,but a twenty-something Transmitter Tech back then!

Definitely off-topic .
I had a look at Ivor's site,& he sounds nuttier than ever,a bit like Wayne Green,if you've ever read any of his stuff.

VK6ZGO

[G7PSK]

Time for bed said Zebedee, Boing!

[siliconmix]

that wayne green is doing something right.thats one busy life.i don't know about 1500 calories a day mind 

[Zad]

I remember reading his articles in the 1980s, he had some interesting (and important) things to say, especially about wafer scale integration and impedance matching in digital circuits. This was back when 8MHz seemed fast, and 33MHz was fantasy territory. Unfortunately, like so many engineers who find a bit of fame, they have a couple of pet subjects that they become obsessive about, and end up looking rather obsessive to the point where they are almost paranoid. I'm thinking of people like Eric Laithwaite. Her pioneered magnetic levitation and linear motors, but his obsession with gyroscopes got to the point where the formal institutions couldn't support him. 

We do have a bit of a track record of eccentric geniuses here in the UK. Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Frank Whittle etc. Even people like Michael Faraday, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and James Clerk Maxwell were seen as somewhat outside the establishment.

[G7PSK]

The line between genius and madness is of nano scale proportions.