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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
We are unabashed fans of [The History Guy’s] YouTube channel, although his history videos aren’t always about technology, and even when they are, they don’t always dig into the depths that we’d like to see. That’s understandable since the channel is a general interest channel. However, for this piece on James Clerk Maxwell, he brought in [Arvin Ash] to handle the science side. While [The History Guy] talked about Maxwell’s life and contributions, [Arvin] has a complimentary video covering the math behind the equations. [...]
Deriving Maxwell’s equations is a math nightmare, but [Arvin] doesn’t do that. He uses some amazing graphics to explain how the equations relate electricity and magnetism. A great deal of our modern world — especially related to any sort of radio technology — builds on these four concise equations.
One thing we didn’t realize is how wide-ranging Maxwell’s interest were. He contributed to astronomy by explaining Saturn’s rings, derived statistical laws about gasses, and worked on color vision, including creating the first light-fast color photograph. He also contributed to thermodynamics, control theory, and optics. Those were the days!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:18PM (3 children)
I didn't watch the video because of time constraints, but if it wasn't mentioned there, I will mention it here: the form of Maxwell's Equations which are quite compact and simple (using vectors) that we all use is due to Oliver Heavyside.
He is someone who doesn't get nearly the recognition he deserves. I think only electrical engineers know who he is because he was one of them.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday March 28 2020, @02:41PM
quite, Heaviside (Step Function) and LaPlace (Transform) are common tools in engineering space...
I have visited the grave of the latter (LaPlace) in Paris...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @04:18PM
Did they have the vector calculus notations during Maxwell's time? I know it's not just the notation convention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @05:52PM
"Heaviside worked to eliminate the potentials (electric potential and magnetic potential) that Maxwell had used as the central concepts in his equations; this effort was somewhat controversial, though it was understood by 1884 that the potentials must propagate at the speed of light like the fields, unlike the concept of instantaneous action-at-a-distance like the then conception of gravitational potential." -- The term Maxwell's equations [wikipedia.org]
Nikola Tesla promised us that one day our machinery would be powered by the very wheelwork of nature [abc.net.au], which I interpret as meaning that Tesla grokked Maxwell's original equations, and recognized the mistake in Heaviside's restatements.