352 HELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOCRSAL 



With regard tu Radii) COinmuiiicalion, one extract imisl suffice 

 writing on The Electric Telegraph in June, 1902, for the Knc\clopedia 

 Britannica, he says, — "Electromagnetic Theory," Vol. Ill, p. 335: — 



"There is something similar in 'wireless' telegraphy. Sea water, 

 though transparent to light, has quite enough conductivity to 

 make it behave as a conductor for Hertzian waves, and the same 

 is true in a more imperfect manner of the earth. Hence the waves 

 accommodate themselves to the surface of the sea in the same way 

 as waves follow' wires. The irregularities make confusion, no 

 doubt, but the main waves are pulled round by the curvature of 

 the earth, and do not jump off. There is another consideration. 

 There may possibly be a sufficiently conducting la\cr in the upper 

 air. If so, the waves will, so to speak, catch on to ii more or less. 

 Then the guidance will be by the sea on one side and the upper 

 layer on the other. But obstructions, on land espccialK', may 

 not be conducting enough to make waves go round them fairK'. 

 The waves will go partly through them." 



Probably due to his long seclusion, his approach to certain subjects 

 was rather critical. At one time I tried to get a portrait of him for 

 the Institution of Electrical F-ngineers, but failed; — he did not wish 

 to have his photograph exhibited, he thought that "one of the worst 

 results (of such exhibition) was that it makes the public characters 

 think they really are very important people, and that it is therefore a 

 principle of their lives to stand upon doorsteps to be photographed." 



On another occasion when I sent him a copy of an article by a dis- 

 tinguished telephone engineer on "The Heaviside Operational Cal- 

 culus," he replied that he had "looked through the paper . . . with 

 much interest, to see what progress is being made witii the academical 

 lot, whom I have usually found to be very stublxirn and sometimes 

 wilfully blind." 



Some have held that Heaviside was not reaignized as he ought to 

 have been. This was probably the case some time ago, but not in 

 recent years. The same is true of many very great men who were 

 much in advance of their time, for the English have the national 

 characteristic that they do not make much fuss about their great 

 men. So if Heaviside suffered, he shared this experience in common 

 with other pioneers who deserved higher recognition. See, for ex- 

 ample, what Heaviside himself said about one of these, in a footnote 

 in "Electromagnetic Theory," \oi. HI, p. 89: 



"George Francis Fitzgerald is dead. Tlic |)ninature loss of a 

 man of such striking original genius and such wide syni|iathies 



