Editing Oliver Heaviside (section)

==Early life==
Heaviside was born in [[Camden Town]], London, at 55 Kings Street<ref name = Nahin>{{cite book| ref=Nahin|author = Nahin, Paul J. |author-link=Paul J. Nahin| title = Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=e9wEntQmA0IC&pg=PA13| date = 9 October 2002| publisher = JHU Press| isbn = 978-0-8018-6909-9}}</ref>{{rp|13}} (now Plender Street), the youngest of three children of Thomas, a draughtsman and wood engraver, and Rachel Elizabeth (née West). He was a short and red-headed child, and suffered from [[scarlet fever]] when young, which left him with a hearing impairment. A small legacy enabled the family to move to a better part of Camden when he was thirteen and he was sent to Camden House Grammar School. He was a good student, placing fifth out of five hundred pupils in 1865, but his parents could not keep him at school after he was 16, so he continued studying for a year by himself and had no further formal education.<ref name=Hunt91>Bruce J. Hunt (1991) [[The Maxwellians]], [[Cornell University Press]] {{ISBN|978-0-8014-8234-2}}</ref>{{rp|51}}

Heaviside's uncle by marriage was Sir [[Charles Wheatstone]] (1802–1875), an internationally celebrated expert in telegraphy and electromagnetism, and the original co-inventor of the first commercially successful telegraph in the mid-1830s. Wheatstone took a strong interest in his nephew's education<ref name=wheatstone>{{cite book| last1= Sarkar|first1= T. K. | last2= Mailloux|first2= Robert|last3= Oliner|first3= Arthur A.|last4= Salazar-Palma|first4= M. |author4-link=Magdalena Salazar Palma|last5= Sengupta|first5= Dipak L.| title = History of Wireless| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=NBLEAA6QKYkC&pg=PA230| date = 2006| publisher = John Wiley & Sons| isbn = 978-0-471-78301-5| page = 230 |author-link1=Tapan Sarkar|author-link3=Arthur A. Oliner}}</ref> and in 1867 sent him north to work with his older brother Arthur Wheatstone, who was managing one of Charles' telegraph companies in [[Newcastle-upon-Tyne]].<ref name=Hunt91/>{{rp|53}}

Two years later he took a job as a telegraph operator with the Danish [[Great Northern Telegraph Company]] laying a cable from Newcastle to [[Denmark]] using British contractors. He soon became an electrician. Heaviside continued to study while working, and by the age of 22 he published an article in the prestigious ''[[Philosophical Magazine]]'' on 'The Best Arrangement of [[Wheatstone's Bridge]] for measuring a Given Resistance with a Given Galvanometer and Battery'{{sfn|Heaviside|1892|pp=3–8}} which received positive comments from physicists who had unsuccessfully tried to solve this algebraic problem, including [[Sir William Thomson]], to whom he gave a copy of the paper, and [[James Clerk Maxwell]]. When he published an article on the [[Duplex (telecommunications)|duplex]] method of using a telegraph cable,{{sfn|Heaviside|1892|pp=18–34}} he poked fun at R. S. Culley, the engineer in chief of the [[General Post Office#Telegraph|Post Office telegraph]] system, who had been dismissing duplex as impractical. Later in 1873 his application to join the [[Society of Telegraph Engineers]] was turned down with the comment that "they didn't want telegraph clerks". This riled Heaviside, who asked Thomson to sponsor him, and along with support of the society's president he was admitted "despite the P.O. snobs".<ref name=Hunt91/>{{rp|60}}

In 1873, Heaviside had encountered Maxwell's newly published, and later famous, two-volume ''[[Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism]]''. In his old age Heaviside recalled:
{{blockquote|
I remember my first look at the great treatise of Maxwell's when I was a young man... I saw that it was great, greater and greatest, with prodigious possibilities in its power... I was determined to master the book and set to work. I was very ignorant. I had no knowledge of mathematical analysis (having learned only school algebra and trigonometry which I had largely forgotten) and thus my work was laid out for me. It took me several years before I could understand as much as I possibly could. Then I set Maxwell aside and followed my own course. And I progressed much more quickly... It will be understood that I preach the gospel according to my interpretation of Maxwell.<ref>{{cite book| last1= Sarkar|first1= T. K. | last2= Mailloux|first2= Robert|last3= Oliner|first3= Arthur A.|last4= Salazar-Palma|first4= M.|author4-link=Magdalena Salazar Palma |last5= Sengupta|first5= Dipak L. | title = History of Wireless| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=NBLEAA6QKYkC&pg=PA232| date = 30 January 2006| publisher = John Wiley & Sons| isbn = 978-0-471-78301-5| page = 232}}</ref>
}}

Undertaking research from home, he helped develop [[transmission line]] theory (also known as the "''[[telegrapher's equations]]''"). Heaviside showed [[Heaviside condition|mathematically]] that uniformly distributed [[inductance]] in a telegraph line would diminish both [[attenuation]] and [[distortion]], and that, if the inductance were great enough and the [[Electrical insulation|insulation]] [[Electrical resistance|resistance]] not too high, the [[Digital circuit|circuit]] would be distortionless in that [[Current (electricity)|currents]] of all [[Frequency|frequencies]] would have equal speeds of propagation.<ref>{{EB1911 |wstitle=Telephone |volume=26 |page=554 |first=Harry Robert |last=Kempe |inline=1}}</ref> Heaviside's equations helped further the implementation of the telegraph.