We'll Take Him
Kirt's Cogitations™ #15

RF Cafe University "Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and "Tech Topics Smorgasbord" are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:

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We'll Take Him

Charles Proteus Steinmetz fled Germany in 1889 because of his political views, and came to America to continue his engineering work on transformers and electric power distribution. Unsettled at the inability to calculate losses due to magnetism in transformers and other AC apparatus, Steinmetz worked out a theoretical and experimental method for doing so. His result was the discovery of "hysterisis" properties, the phenomenon by which a material's magnetism in a given magnetic field can have two different values. The principle has subsequently been applied to positive feedback in the electrical and mechanical realms as well as in biology and many other fields.

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...