Many moons ago, I had this quotation neatly penned and displayed in my study area. I must have found it in a book or magazine (yeah, those days ;-). Right now, Google only finds it in 3 pages from a couple of sources, apparently in audio electronics circles.

It may be spurious, but it’s at least “bene trovato” … Any confirmation/source gratefully received.

I haven’t heard this quote, but Heaviside was prolific in writing letters as well as articles, so I’m not surprised that he might have written it and not surprised that I haven’t come across it. Sounds just like him, though. If I come across the source of the quote I’ll drop you an email. Thanks for sharing it. — Ron

This was one of my early essays. In later essays I started creating the equations in LaTeX or Word Equation Editor and inserting them as images, which is infinitely better, particularly considering what the Georgia font does to numbers, etc. When I get a chance I’ll redo these. Thanks for the suggestion–I had totally forgotten that this essay had equations rendered in text. Meanwhile, if you click on the link at the bottom of the essay for the printer-friendly PDF version, you will see that the equations are rendered much better in the Times New Roman font of that file.

ps. also what the heck is with that anti-spam thing - do you really expect people to read that they have to add 80?…

The Wordpress Askimet plug-in has caught over 7,000 spam comments submitted to this blog over the last year or so. It was only a matter of time before spam got through their filter. So I started using a Wordpress anti-spam plug-in that required just the simple sum to be calculated, but it only slowed the spam mostly because, I guess, spambots worked around it. By modifying the plug-in code to require adding another value (chosen as 80) written in the text above the box, I’ve really reduced the spam that gets through to the Askimet filter. It’s also true that if an incorrect sum is submitted, a message appears reminding the commenter to add the 80. — Ron

Thank you for your comment, Ed—it makes a nice addendum to the essay! I had seen Mikusinski’s name when I was looking for references on Heaviside, but I didn’t pursue it. It’s also a fact that abstract algebra is not a strong suit of mine. I see that Mikusinski’s “Operational Calculus” is held by a local university library, and now I’m intrigued enough to retrieve the book and have a go at it. We’ll see.