During his final years, whilst living in Newton Abbot, Oliver Heaviside wrote many letters to friends and colleagues. These writings are a fascinating and often alarming resource as they seem to document his increasingly agitated state of mind so explicitly. 
In a letter to his friend George FitzGerald (dated June 19th, 1897) Heaviside signed off on a typically peculiar diatribe with a paragraph about a bat that had taken up brief residence in his home. The letter is reproduced in the song almost verbatim, with the bat's "responses" sung in the right stereo channel, through a frequency manipulating filter. We were interested in connections between the bat's mode of navigation/communication and Heaviside's incredible scientific leaps in the field of telegraphy. The subject matter also allowed us to play with echoes and the notion of duality.

Too Straight For A Bat

There is a bat flying about in my sitting room
I’m tired of rattling around here
It must have got in at the window upstairs
God knows how I ended up here
and then come down
I can’t calm down

Shall I try and catch him - try and catch him
There’s never been another to catch me
Never examined one at close quarters
No-one so much as looks at me
goes round and round
endless circling around

He may smash something before he has done 
There’s more chance of me tripping on a granite stone
Not having any salt at hand
I haven’t got any such thing around
I’m obliged to let him leave
And how do you think I’ll survive?

	echolocation  
	the sound goes out in every direction 
	up to 200,000 hertz - a cross-correlation
	the sound vibrates back as a powerful echo
	to build a picture in the animal’s mind
	
I opened the front door to encourage him to go
Starlings, jackdaws, ravens, crows
and he soon found the way to get himself out 
But surely he knows I’m not one of those
he went too straight for a bat
I don’t fly well - I’ll give you that

 

Too Straight For A Bat (Echolocation)

Vanitas paintings flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries. Typically, these were still-life compositions in which the subject or artist had assembled various objects meant to symbolise the inevitability of mortality and the transience (or vanity) of earthly objects. Images of skulls or rotting fruit conveyed notions of decay and morbidity. Musical instruments were often used to communicate brevity or lightness. 
The concept was a jumping off point for this song, dealing as it seems to, with a notion of Heaviside as a largely unknown but hugely significant person. 

Vanitas

i’m waiting for the painter to portray my portrait
he wants me to find objects with which I associate
i started to ponder how I would make a display
but realise I can’t - it is impossible there is no way
I can show how I improved submarine telegraph cable communication
and the mathematical condition for distortionless transmission
now known internationally as the Heaviside Condition
but I never patented it and never got remuneration
(Michael Pupin made millions from my invention)

i’m waiting for the painter to portray my portrait
he wants me to find objects with which I associate
a watch or an hourglass, a flower or a butterfly?
but my life has been numbers I have been working out a way
I can predict a layer of gas in the atmosphere that produces a reflection
Of radio waves to travel way beyond the horizon 
This is now known as the Heaviside Layer (or sometimes ‘The E Region’)
But wasn’t proved until just before I died - by Edward A. Appleton
(He won the Nobel prize for this in 1947)

i’m waiting for the painter to portray my portrait
he wants me to find objects with which I associate
a musical instrument, an angel, a map of the sky
but I have only my books and the method of my mind so
I can show the workings out of unit step function
usually denoted by H which is mostly used as a distribution
This is now known as the Heaviside Step Function and is used in engineering
but I never made a penny from it and now only have a reputation
as a mad old man who’s buried in his parents grave in Paignton

"spirits of the upper air".




Vanitas

Wonderful words from the wonderfully eccentric Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925.

'If it is love that makes the world go round
it is self-induction that makes electromagnetic waves go round the world'

new circular tune from HN - bars of 7,8 and 3 - join in...

if it is love

A mathematical song written with and sung by the Choral Engineers, in the local studies room, on Saturday 10th of January at Torquay Museum.

Life Adds Up

The Heaviside Condition is Hugh Nankivell and Steve Sowden's (The Shared Inventions) ongoing creative research adventure. 

We are songwriters based in Torbay and through music, we are re-examining Oliver Heaviside's local and global legacy. 

Heaviside was the eccentric and brilliant pioneer of early telegraphy, electromagnetic theory and radio in the late nineteenth century. 

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Heaviside.html

Hugh and Steve (The Shared Inventions) have so far collaborated on projects for the English Riviera Global Geopark, the National Theatre of Scotland, an interpretation of Beck's 'Song Reader' manuscript with their band 'Trio Of Men' and a number of creative education adventures with young people.

theheavisidecondition