Professor Eric Laithwaite: The Circle of Magnetism - 1968

[Phil]

Nice find, Richard.

Eric Laithwaite was a boyhood hero of mine - a genius of electrical engineering, one of the few people who really understood the practicalities of magnetism, a gifted lecturer, and the inventor of the linear motor. He was well-funded by the British Government for his research on the latter, and then was forced to watch helplessly as the government (via the notorious 'British Technology Group') not only gave away all his research and patents to the Japanese, but stopped all his funding and made him legally unable to continue his research. The only linear motor 'maglev' train system in the UK operates between Birmingham airport and its associated railway station and I have made a point of riding on it. It was built by the British company GEC who had to licence the technology - Laithwaite's work - from the Japanese.

This betrayal broke Laithwaite, and in latter years his mental state was clearly diminished. He tried to turn his hand to understanding gyroscopes, determined that they inexplicably broke the laws of inertia, and attempted to demonstrate this publicly by way of a very ill-conceived experiment broadcast publicly on TV. Within days, other research groups had improved his experiment in order to show that he had, at least, deluded himself and he was denounced as a rather sad crank. Disillusioned, he disappeared into comparative obscurity and was largely forgotten. He continued to champion the ideas of experimental amateurs rather than theoretical academics, which naturally meant that he probably mixed with at least as many cranks as gifted laymen after his retirement.

I always found his books and lectures enormously inspirational, and this short film is no exception.

Phil M1GWZ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Laithwaite



On 7 Sep 2014, at 18:09, Richard O'Neill wrote:

> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tJfqMYHaQw
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