Maxwell's Quarternians

Dennis C. Lee ( (no email) )
Sat, 29 Aug 1998 23:24:46 +0000

I recently discovered that Maxwell's equations are really an incomplete
version of the his theory. The equations are Oliver Heavyside's
interpretation of Maxwell's work. Maxwell's did not have those equations in
any of his writings. The theory was originally expressed with quarternian
mathematics. Heavyside was not familiar with this math and did not
understand the higher dimensional concepts. After Maxwell's passing,
Heavyside simplified the theory to the equations we have today. In the
process, he left out over 200 quarternians. Only the 1873 first edition of
"Treatise of Electricity and Magnitism" has the original quarternian math.
The following page has an account of this event in more detail:

http://www.enterprisemission.com/hyper1a.html

There is a digital edition of Maxwell's bio at:

http://sonnetusa.com/aj_c.htm

I am interested in obtaining a copy of Maxwell's first edition of
"Treatise..." and posting a digital edition on the web in a similar manner.
I have located these volumes in the rare books section at Harvard, however
they do not allow photocopying there. If anyone out there is able to locate
these volumes at a reasonable cost, I will put the effort into posting them
on a web site. Collaborators on this project would be most welcome.

Towards a Better Future
Dennis
Tall Ships
http://pw1.netcom.com/~atech/tallship.html