Heaviside: Investigator sites log

Run 2026-10-05 (first run, on request; 10-minute cap; measured search/browse time about 6.5 min)

Owner's direction: close the source gap by reading Heaviside's own texts (Electrical Papers 1892, Electromagnetic Theory 1893-1912, the 1887 distortionless-line material, the 1902 Britannica passage), then the Preece-Heaviside record of the 1887 block. No earlier sites.md, so no rechecks were due.

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Keywords tried

• archive.org: creator:(Heaviside, Oliver) AND mediatype:texts; title:(encyclopaedia britannica) AND (year:1902 OR year:1903) AND mediatype:texts
• In-text searches (EP2, EMT1-3, EB vol. 33): Preece; brother; A. W. Heaviside; Bridge System; suppress; telephony; practician; curious; returned; rejected; declined; editor; Arthur; self-induction; induct; distortion; inertia; increas; KR; leakage; 1885-1888; PREECE ON; Biggs; discontinu; now first published; boycott; gravitat; GRAVITATIONAL AND ELECTROMAGNETIC; Gravitational Difficulty; probably wrong; Maxwell's solution; intrinsically magnetised; aberration; speed of light; Einstein; relativ; Lorentz; FitzGerald; Minkowski; Kennelly; ionis; upper air; layer; Encyclop; digestion; Royal Society; rigorist
• Google: Heaviside 1902 "Encyclopaedia Britannica" telegraphy "upper air" conducting layer text; "Heaviside" "bridge system" telephony 1887 Preece Arthur paper refused; IET Archives "Heaviside" papers collection notebooks "SC MSS"; site:iet.adlibhosting.com Heaviside Preece; Heaviside "On Operators in Physical Mathematics" "Part III" referee Burnside Royal Society archive; Royal Society archive catalogue referee report Heaviside operators 1894 Burnside RR; Kennelly 1902 "Electrical World and Engineer" "elevation of the electric-wave conducting strata" OR "upper atmosphere" Marconi; "BT Archives" Heaviside Preece 1887 telephony file OR catalogue
• Next runs, untried: "scienticulist"; "Biggs" "Electrician" 1887 editor; "Self-Induction of Wires" "Part VIII"; Heaviside patent 1407 1880; Burnside referee Heaviside; "Heaviside" "Einstein" letters; Josephs Heaviside Paignton floorboards 1957; Preece "self-induction" British Association 1887 Manchester; Society of Telegraph Engineers council minutes 1887; "Heaviside" "Searle" correspondence; German: "Heaviside" "Operatorenrechnung" Geschichte.

Leads for review

1. The inventor's own work

• Claim 3, in his own 1887 words (EP2 Sec. XL, The Electrician 1887, pp. 119-124): "Increasing the inductance is another way of improving things"; "There is a critical value of the inductance for minimum attenuation-ratio"; leakage "increased [attenuation], but the distortion is reduced. This has led me to a theoretically perfect arrangement. Make R/L = K/S, and the distortion is annihilated"; solution f(x - vt)e^(-Rt/L), energy "half electric, half magnetic". The section opens with "a load of matter that has come back to me under rather curious circumstances". [web] https://archive.org/details/electricalpapers02heavrich . Bears on claim 3 and Records-that-go-quiet item 1 (the blocked paper's content was published, in part, here).
• Claim 3, the dated silence: EP2 Art. 38 "Mr. W. H. Preece on the Self-Induction of Wires", "[Sept. 24, 1887; but now first published.]" (1892): "Mr. Preece is wrong, not merely in some points of detail, but radically wrong". And EMT1 sec. 1: the Electrician series stopped in Sept 1887 for "pressure on space and the want of readers ... Perhaps there were other reasons ... We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth." [web] archive.org EP2, EMT1.
• Claim 7a, his argument (EMT1 sec. 83, p. 103-104): Maxwell's stress-based force on a magnet is "quite erroneous" chiefly because "it lumps together intrinsic and induced magnetisation, which have essential differences and are physically distinct"; the total force follows from the outside stress, but the internal distribution "can only be done hypothetically, and with precarious validity". Testable only through internal stress, as the arbiter guessed. Formulas still unread (need page images).
• Claim 7b, his 1893 analogy (EMT1 App. B): gravity propagated at speed v through the ether; "no aberrational effect, but only a slight alteration in the intensity of force", weaker along the line of motion, stronger equatorially, of order (u/v)^2 = 10^-6 for u = 30 km/s. Sec. 68 "gravitational difficulty": gravitational energy has no known flux ("we are entirely ignorant of its distribution in the ether"). Answers Open question 1 in part.
• Claim 7c, absence: EMT vol. 3 (1912) never names Einstein (0 hits; Lorentz 30, FitzGerald 15). His anti-relativity remarks must be in the unpublished vol. 4 notes or letters.
• Claim 5, the rejected Part III in print: EMT2 sec. 425 (p. ~434), on generalised differentiation and divergent series: "if investigations of this matter are not good enough for Another Place, how can they be good enough for Electromagnetic Theory? ... the wet blankets of rigorists." EMT2 p. 9 "Shall I refuse my dinner ...?" verified.
• Claim 6, the 1902 text: EB 10th ed. vol. XXXIII "Telegraphy", I. Theory: "There may possibly be a sufficiently conducting layer in the upper air. If so, the waves will, so to speak, catch on to it more or less. Then the guidance will be by the sea on one side and the upper layer on the other." Framed as guidance between two conductors, tentative ("may possibly"). [web] https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.209824
• New own-work item: British patent 1880 no. 1407, "Improvements in Electrical Conductors ..." (to O. Heaviside alone; worked with A. W. Heaviside), called by Bruton "essentially the patent for ... a 'coaxial cable'". [web] Bruton 2018.
• Notebooks: IET SC MSS 005/I/1/12 (1886-1889), MS copy of "Self Induction of Wires" with notes on Parts VIII and IX(?) "declined by the Philosophical Magazine and blocked by Preece" (Bruton's description).

2. Supporting information by others

• 1925 IEE obituary (Grace's Guide): self-induction was "regarded by practical telegraphists as a bugbear"; "Among the first to take the theory up ... was Silvanus Thompson in this country and, with considerable success, Dr. Pupin in America." Russell, Nature 1925: Pupin worked "on these lines some ten years later". Both written by admirers.
• Kelvin's 1889 IEE presidential address praised his propagation theory (Hunt 2012; Grace's Guide).

3. Closely related work

• Kennelly, Electrical World and Engineer 39(11):473, 15 March 1902: independent ionised-layer proposal, nine months before the Britannica volume (Dec 1902, per Bruton). Priority on publication date goes to Kennelly; text not yet read.
• Silvanus Thompson: an early British advocate of loading (IEE 1925 obituary); named with Heaviside by Preece as a "drawing room philosopher".
• Föppl 1894 textbook spread Heaviside's form of the equations (Hunt).

4. Historical record

• Preece's own position, in his papers: IET SC MSS 022/VII/526, pencil draft reply to Kelvin, n.d.: "Heaviside and his dreadful twaddle", using "Kelvin's formula to show that he is correct and Heaviside is wrong", criticising "'drawing room philosophers' like Oliver Heaviside and Sylvanus Thompson" (catalogue description). Party with a stake: a public position (self-induction the enemy; costly iron-to-copper change justified by it, Hunt) and seniority. First primary record found of Preece's reasoning (Open question 3).
• Kelvin to Preece, 12 July 1887 (SC MSS 022/VII/535): a Heaviside Phil. Mag. footnote "should not have appeared as it was so ill natured".
• Mechanism of the block, two versions: Hunt (2012) and Bruton (2018): the April 1887 joint paper for the Journal of the STE was blocked by Preece as Arthur's superior before submission. IEE obituary (1925): papers "rejected by the Society of Telegraph Engineers". Grace's chronology: Heaviside "suspected" Preece blocked publication and caused the Electrician cancellation. Deciding records: STE council minutes 1887 and the IET notebook 005/I/1/12.
• Loss of The Electrician outlet: Biggs (editor, Heaviside's supporter) declined his anti-Preece letters for fear of libel, then was "abruptly removed" in Oct 1887, "a move he later hinted was prompted by his support for Heaviside"; the new editor cancelled the series (Hunt, citing Mahon 2009 p. 79). Biggs's hint is his own account; no other source seen.
• Earlier stake, 1873: Preece to Culley on OH's duplex paper, "most pretentious and impudent ... He must be met somehow"; Culley: "We will try to pot Oliver somehow" (Bruton, archival ref. [22]). OH had not cited Preece's 1855 duplex patent and had ridiculed Culley's work.
• Arthur's position: AWH acquiesced and later sided with Preece on loading (Hunt; Bruton). OH in 1922: "AWH was very afraid of P ... The greatest mistake AWH ever made was to throw me overboard" (IET SC MSS 068; OH's characterization).
• Stevenson letters (SC MSS 005/I/6/43, 1897-1921) on "Heaviside's brother's career and being blocked by Preece".
• Pupin payment, three figures: $455,000 (Wikipedia), "over $400 000" (IET blog), $500,000 (Hunt). Primary: AT&T/Pupin contracts.
• Operators Part III: referee William Burnside (Hunt 1991 chapter, snippet). Report not yet located (Royal Society RR series).
• Records that go quiet, item 2 (vol. 4): Russell (1925) says he planned vol. 3 for 1904 and a concluding volume for 1910 but "found [this] impossible" and made the 1912 volume the "concluding" one. Bruton: papers "discovered under the floorboards of OH's former home in Paignton around 1957" (used by H. J. Josephs, GPO); a 1932 GPO report on "the Heaviside Analysis", "no copies of which survive". The 2003 AMS Chelsea edition with the vol. 4 notes is on archive.org as a lending item only.