[Elecraft] Maxwell's Equations.

[Tom Azlin N4ZPT]

Hi Kevin,

What was asserted in "The Maxwellians" was that Maxwell died in the 
middle of a rewrite. It did sound like there was a controversy on his 
particle (or little eddies?) form of the equations for a field approach. 
  Perhaps that new version would have dropped  the use of quaternions? 
Have not studied the equations since college, perhaps will go find the 
papers after I finish this history book. Thanks for the tip on locating 
the older forms.

73, tom n4zpt

On 3/10/2011 1:46 AM, Kevin Rock wrote:
> There was a group which disliked his use of quaternions so he was forced
> to rewrite the system into other systems.  Most of the work was carried
> out by others but for him to publish he needed peer review so he caved
> into the larger group.  I am reading his original work from 1873 and
> finding it very enlightening.  Even though I have studied the
> Heaviside-Gibb's version of the Maxwell equations many times the
> quaternions he used in the original paper were very hard to find.  Luckily
> they are proliferating online these days.
>      Kevin.  KD5ONS
>
>
> On Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:31:18 -0800, David Cutter<d.cutter at ntlworld.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I don't recall that from his biography, I'll have to read it again.
>> Interesting.
>>
>> David
>> G3UNA
>>
>>
>>> Hi Kevin,
>>>
>>> Was not Maxwell that condensed the hard to understand original theory.
>>> Was some his disciples, aka "The Maxwellians," that finished the theory
>>> in the present form.  FitzGerald, Lodge, and Heavyside plus others.
>>>
>>> Am just now reading "The Maxwellians" that has this story.
>>>
>>> 73, tom n4zpt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/6/2011 5:37 PM, Kevin Rock wrote:
>>>> I have always wondered how he condensed the original twenty equations
>>>> in
>>>> twenty unknowns down to just four of them.  The quaternions he used
>>>> initially were out a favor with the physics community of the day so he
>>>> needed to get them into vector form.  Heaviside did a good job but how
>>>> do
>>>> you characterize a system with twenty unknowns in four equations?  What
>>>> has been lost in the translation?
>>>>       Kevin.  KD5ONS