350 BFJJ. SYSTEM TECHXICAL JOURNAL 



was unusual. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that until al)i)ul 

 the year 1900 few engineers understood him. 



Coming to his work, what was it that Heaviside did, and upon 

 what does his fame rest? That is too large a subject for a telephone 

 engineer to answer fully, but as regards communication engineering 

 something may be said. His great achie\emenl was the discovery 

 of the laws governing the propagation of energy in circuits. He 

 recognized the relationship between frequency and distortion; he 

 illustrated it by numerical examples, and he showed what was re- 

 quired to make a "distortionless circuit." Further, he showed the 

 effects of "attenuation" and the result of "inductance" (these words 

 were his own coinage) in improving telephony. He also explained 

 how the inductance of circuits could be increased; he suggested the 

 use of continuous loading, of lumped inductance in the form of coils, 

 and he pointed out the difficulty of obtaining sufficiently low resistance 

 in such coils. He in\esti8atcd the etTect of sea and land and the 

 upper atmosphere on the propagation of radio energy and how it was 

 that this energy could be transmitted o\er the mountain of earth 

 intervening between two distant places. 



His acti\ity in these matters can best be illustrated by extracts 

 from his writings, as follows: 



In his "Electrical Papers," \(ii. II, written in ISS", p. Uil, he 

 gives numerical e\am[iles of fre(|uenc\' distortion and of its correction, 

 and says : 



"It is tlie \er\- essence of good long distance teli-piion\- that 

 inductance should not be negligible." 



In his "Electromagnetic Theor\-," \'oi. I, j)ui>iishe(l in hSiKi, he 

 considers in Section 218, p. 441. 



"various ways, good and bad, of increasing the inductance of 

 circuits" 



He suggests, page 44."), the use of 



". . . inductance in isolated lumps. This means the insertion 

 of inductance coils at inter\als in the main circuit. That is to say 

 just as the effect of uniform leakage may be imitated by leakage 

 concentrated at distinct points, so we should try to imitate the 

 inertial effects of uniform inductance by concentrating the induct- 

 ance at distinct points. The more points the better, of course . . . 

 The Electrical difficulty here is that inductance coils ha\e resistance 

 as well, and if this is too great the remedy is worse than the disease. 



