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| Hedy Lamarr Occupation: Actor, Inventor Most Beautiful Electrical Engineer? |
Once in a while we heard of Oliver Heaviside. For example, Heaviside’s Partial Expansion, Heaviside’s Unit Function, Heaviside’s Distortionless line & Heaviside Layer. Actually he was instrumental in developing Transmission Line & Operational Calculus. He introduced D or P operator to solve differential equations in an algebraic fashion. We have learned all the trade under the title of Laplace Transformation. It is shameful that most textbooks fail to mention his genius and contribution to the Electrical Engineering.
There are some similarities between Heaviside (1850-1925) & Edison (1847-1931). Both of them lived around the same time. Both of them were telegraph operators, well versed in Morse Code. Both of them were self-taught engineer & lacked of formal education in mathematics. Perhaps due to this, their works lacked of rigorous proof & procedure. However, Heaviside got the credit to reduce Maxwell’s 20 equations in 20 variables to 4 equations & four variables. In fact, what we know about Maxwell’s equation is in the form worked by Heaviside. In 1902 Heaviside predicted that there was an conducting layer in the atmosphere which allowed radio waves to follow the Earth’s curvature. This layer is later called Heaviside Layer. Perhaps Heaviside has become widely known due to a song by Andrew Lloyd Webber: "Journey to the Heaviside Layer" in the American Musical Cats.
Edison was a great inventor but he missed out the industry of power transmission & distribution. He advocated Direct Current instead of Alternating Current. Here came another genius Charles Steinmetz we don’t hear often enough. Steinmetz was a German got problem with Otto Von Bismarck & fled to the US. He worked in GE & was instrumental in promoting Alternating Current over Direct Current. He worked out most of the mathematical & engineering details relating to how the alternating current would be used in the power transmission.
PS1: "Journey to the Heaviside Layer" can be found in the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvsRZ8FVx4o
The lyrics are very simple:
Up, up, up, past the Russell Hotel
Up, up, up, up, to the Heaviside Layer
repeated several times.
PS2: Do you know the most beautiful electrical engineer in history? The answer is Hedy Lamarr (海蒂拉瑪). She was the heroine of the famous movie “Samson & Delilah” (霸王妖姬, 1949). Here were some headlines:
How was Hedy Lamarr’s wartime invention revolutionizing wireless communications?
How “The Bad Boy of Music” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” catalyzed a Wireless Revolution in 1941?
People assume that perhaps Hedy Lamarr wasn’t intelligent because she was so beautiful. But she really had a mind…she held her own with anybody.
Hedy Lamaar & Spread Spectrum
Frequency-Hopping Spread-Spectrum Invention & Hedy Lamaar
Spread Spectrum & Internet
The following link has info about her invention:
http://britneyspears.ac/physics/intro/hedy.htm
The issue June 23, 1997 of MicroTimes magazine was dedicated to her achievement. Sadly, she passed away in 2000. Her ashes were spread in the romantic Vienna Woods.
4 comments:
Just away for 2 weeks and we have two new posts. Guess I should be away more often.
We did have some professors who did have things to teach us, but most of them just didn't have the capability of inspiring us or rousing our curiosity. Here is a question I would like to ask all classmates. In our 4 years at NTU EE, was there a professor who you really admired? Or have you ever considered any of the professors your role model? I think your answer should pretty much tell the kind of teachers we had at Taida. For me, I have 1/2 and 1/4. The 1/2 was professor Lu, the material science prof. from mechanical engineering; the 1/4 was our EE chairman, Hsu, who I think most of you would strongly disagree.
I don't know if any of you remembered my small episode with Prof Huang, our freshman Chinese teacher. Once, I walked out in the middle of his class, and he came out chasing after me. We had a few words outside just between the two of us. I simply told him I wasn't interested in the class but I did respect him a lot. What's surprising was that he seemed to understand and just let me go. Yeah, I walked out of classrooms many times in the freshman year. Too bad, he had to teach what he was assigned to; there was no way anyone was going to teach Taiwanese literature even as liberal and free as Taida. It was for the same reason that we were not allowed to learn about the great writers who stayed in mainland.
Wei asked a good question that demands a good answer. A good professor or teacher should be a good communicator & well versed in the subject he is teaching. He should also have genuine interests in the growth of his students. A good teacher deserves our admiration. A role model is a good professor with passion in what he is teaching & also have genuine interest in the welfare of his students. With these criteria, I have to say I have no role model in Taida EE. I do find two good professors. The first one is 翁 通 楹, our professor of Applied Mechanics. The second one is 李 舉 賢, our professor of Applied Electronics. I have learned a lot from them, not just the technical knowledge but also the way as persons I respect.
PS: I don’t quite understand ½ & ¼ mean in Wei’s comment.
How we connect and admire a professor is quite personal. My admiration of prof. Lu and Prof. Hsu were 1/2 and 1/4 because Prof. Lu still had the passion at such an old age while Prof. Hsu's passion was much less in comparison. I got to know both better during my years working at EE. Why not 100%? Because I just wanted partially like them. For instance, I admire Confusius but I don't want to be like him; because he didn't seem to know how to have fun. Maybe he did know how to have fun, but he never showed "how" he had "what" fun. Cheers!
英雄所見略同, my list of admiration is as follows:
1. 李舉賢:Although the Elctronics he
taught was for Vacumn Tube, he did explain very clearly the undelining physical principles. I also served as his teaching assitant in the Elcetronic Lab. while I worked as a assiatant in the Dept.We almost always came into the Lab. about the same time round 8:00 am and left the Lab. around 5:00 pm. I learned a lot from his devotion to his job.
2. 許照: Here I agreed with Wei. I
took his Modern Physics in my senior. He gave me a fundamental
knowledge about Modern Physics and
inspired me to get interest in Quantum Mechanics. I also served as a teaching assitant in Modern Physics. I had to study several referneces to prepare problems for mid-term and final examinations and graded them for his behalf. Because of this training, I waived
Quantum Mechanics whiel I enrolled
at Space Science Dept. Rice Univ.
My most admiration came from his unselfish donation of his book income from a Foundation to raise
the funding for the new EE building. Because of his contribution, many US alumni donated to the funding as well.
This was the first building ever
built by the funding through a department chairman in Taida history. He would have become Dean of Engineering, if there were no
Computer Center scandal of his negligence.
3. 翁通楹: He was quite q character in teaching.He raised up and down in his voices with strong Japanese English accent. He commented several times that he enjoyed teaching our class better than ME
students, becuase he felt that we were more serious about his course.
4. 張煋: I took his Transistor Circuits in my senior.He seemed to be quite knowledgeable in the course content.
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