Talk:Ivor Catt

message: http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/spiral2.pdf . Fascinating that the Wikipedia Thought Police prevent any editing of the main Article. Also they have removed all discussion of Catt's main work, electromagnetic Theory. Here they join forces with the IET and IEEE, who have blocked Catt for 50 years. Now Catt's em theory work is in the top Royal Society journal. How long with they let this stay on "Talk"? - Ivor Catt, 9 November 2018  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:C27:6700:9DC0:6769:7DA2:DFBB (talk) 10:25, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed what looks to be a copyright violation from your website and replaced it with the RSTA page. You've been spamming this article and that's why you've been reverted. You shouldn't be editing the article at all, just this talk page. Doug Weller talk 17:43, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Sir Clive Sinclair's filmed interview about Ivor Catt's invention of practical WSI

message: I have just been notified by a kind email from Liba (Ivor's partner) that Ivor is in Watford general hospital. She did not give details, but it is a serious problem, so if anyone wants to send a "get well soon" card, that would be a nice idea. I will hopefully be able to visit Ivor later today (will not get into physics arguments!). - Nigel Cook, 14 Nov. 07 172.143.140.135 11:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Health scare

message: Hello, I stumbled across this page.   Having never heard of Ivor Catt, I have done a bit of reading and I'm inclined to make a major revision.  Seeing that he has some fans here I would like to preempt an edit war.   My credentials, in case they matter, are as a physics postdoc with experience with circuits, electron beams, ion beams, electron traps, etc.   Here goes:
*What's the point of Catt's argument that "displacement current" doesn't exist?   Of course it doesn't "exist".   It's an artifact which shows up if you try (incorrectly) to use Kirchoff's current law in a circuit where there is a variable charge density.  It's convenient in circuit design when you want to write equations strictly in terms of I and V, without having also a Q term.   But of course it's not a real thing; the real things are electrons and electromagnetic fields.   If you work through the behavior of a capacitor using charge currents, charge densities, and fields, it gives you an exact physical description---including the electric fields in the capacitor gap, the attraction/repulsion of electrons on the other side of the gap, and the appearance of a current on the other side.   If you work through a capacitor using Kirchoff's Law, you have to invent the "displacement current" to rescue the conservation law when you analyze the gap itself.   Does Catt's entire argument spring from "There is no displacement current; therefore the mainstream professors, who taught me that there is, are wrong"?            
*Does Catt have a theory of electrostatic force?   Isn't that an important detail---more important than some disagreement between Spice and reality in some random transient circuit---of the claim that electrons do not carry charge?   (Do protons and nuclei carry charge, then?)       
*Almost all of the "physics" references are to Ivor Catt's own articles and Web pages.  By Wikipedia's NOR standards, this is unacceptable; if Catt can write "copper is an dielectric with blah blah", put it on his Web page, and point Wikipedia to it, than any crackpot can come along and do the same with their pet theory of how the ether is made up of leprechauns.   This whole page reads like the front page of Catt's personal website.    
*Catt is thoroughly outside of the mainstream of E&M theory.   This needs to be made absolutely clear on every point of disagreement.   I know that Catt wants to be in the mainstream, and has been arguing for his theories for a long time, but the fact remains (and Catt surely knows it) that he's not there yet.   Wikipedia is a terrible place to try to jump-start or popularize his theories; that's the strategy of crackpots.   Popularize elsewhere, report the popularity here.
*I see that the talk page below is going back and forth about the details of E&M and QED's validity.   This is interesting and should continue, but---well, I haven't read the talk archives, but I hope you're aware that anything you logically hash-out on this page is not relevant to the validity of statements on the article.   If you think that you've found a flaw in QED, take it over to the Quantum Electrodynamics talk page---if that flaw isn't borne out by the mainstream QED literature, it's not a valid basis for this article, except to say that "Catt believes he has found flaws in QED" or whatever.   Is this approach hidebound and anti-progress?   Well, Wikipedia talk pages are a bad place to make scientific progress.    If your arguments actually do turn up a flaw in QED, take it to Phys Rev Letters and come back to WP to report the contents of your article.  
*Things I want to delete: about 2/3rds of "Catt's Views on Electromagnetism", which, at the level they're supported elsewhere, merit about two paragraphs.  Public Arguments,  Support From ... ,  War of Words,  Quotes On, Associates/Supporters: these should be deleted entirely.   It reads like a blogger summing up his favorite flamewars.   Unlike Galileo, Catt has not won this fight, making the details are pretty non-notable.   (If he wins and is vindicated in a big way, come back and write about his struggles on the way up.)    All of the non-bibliography quality references should go, along with about half of the external links.  Bm gub 21:39, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hello

message: Ivor Catt comments. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x46.htm  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.43.94 (talk) 20:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Welcome to the fray 

message: OK, there's the rewrite.  Here's question number 2: if Catt is notable in the Wikipedia sense, why can I find no information about him other than his own Web pages?   A Google search for "Ivor Catt" turns up page after page of links to ivorcatt.com and www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk, but virtually nothing---not even Usenet arguments---beyond that.   Rather than saying Catt is "well known for his controversial approach", perhaps the article should say, in its entirety,  "Catt was a circuit engineer of some repute in the 1970s.   Today, he has a voluminous output of alternative electromagnetic theories, published via his own Web pages, where he reports on his arguments with mainstream engineers and physicists. "   I see no evidence that he's even famous by crank standards in the manner of Tom Bearden, nor controversial by the standards of ... oh, I dunno, process physics.   Can anyone turn up an article somewhere (other than crank.net or keelynet) actually about Ivor Catt, even for the purpose of saying "I got into an argument with Catt"?  If not, I'm in favor of nominating this for deletion.        Bm gub 18:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Question #2

message: Hello anon@92.2.217.251, 
Please keep in mind, when editing the article: 
:1) Catt himself may not be the most relit is more or less OK; ivorcatt.com is not.  Please read WP:RS.   
:2) "Wireless World" and "Electronics World" are not peer-reviewed journals; they are popular-press magazines.  
:3) Catt's ideas about electromagnetism are fringe ideas and were never accepted by the mainstream.   Catt himself would presumably admit this (though complaining about it).  Indeed, I can find very little evidence that Catt's ideas were even widely noticed by someone other than himself.   Please read WP:FRINGE which is a guideline for how to include such material in the article.   My rule of thumb is:  it doesn't matter how important the author thinks his work is, or how widely known he/she thinks it should be; all authors think their work is important.  It matters how widely known, discussed, or applied their work actually is. 
I understand that there is a dearth of reliable sources: see, for example, 
a google search which excludes all of Catt's personal web pages.   It gets us to an extremely slim set of hits, ranging from parenting-forum posts to spam, with a bare smattering of comments from his supporters.     
I am reverting your last slate of edits; please consider WP:RS and WP:FRINGE before restoring any of this material.   Cheers, Bm gub (talk) 22:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  March 08 revisions 

message: Vandals are watching this page. When I clean it up, they reverse it within hours. Who are the vandals controlling it and watching it? I did research this a few years ago, but stopped putting time into it. Getting rid of all my electromagnetic theory on the "Article" page was ludicrous. There is "Fulsome praise" for my em theory in the Royal Society Trans A journal, according to Howie CBE, late head of the Cavendish. but all my em theory is removed from this article on Catt. - Ivor Catt    ivorcatt.co.uk/yak.htm    Will this be removed?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:C0A:900:9594:5B81:E4B1:EDBA (talk) 21:32, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: You should not be editing the article. See WP:COI. ~Suggest changes here based on our policies and guidelines, someone might help. Accuse editors of vandalism, you'll just get ignored. Doug Weller talk 13:17, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Catt complains