Heaviside's music notation

I've recently heard that the physicist Oliver Heaviside (who invented
vector calculus, discovered the Heaviside layer, simplified Maxwell's
equations, etc.) also invented a music notation. Does anyone have a
reference or know anything about it?

--john

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, John Chalmers <JHCHALMERS@U...> wrote:
> I've recently heard that the physicist Oliver Heaviside (who
invented
> vector calculus, discovered the Heaviside layer, simplified
Maxwell's
> equations, etc.) also invented a music notation. Does anyone have a
> reference or know anything about it?
>
> --john

I was just thinking about that today, myself! I don't have
a reference, though; I only recall reading it somewhere.
I have the book "Oliver Heaviside" by Paul Nahin, but I
checked the index and it doesn't have anything.

My impression is that his notation wouldn't be microtonal, just
a different way of writing standard piano music, but I'm guessing.

[My interest at the moment is in finding a "mathematical" kind
of notation for writing some music of J.S. Bach. For example,
he states a characteristic pattern in the first measure, and then
through out the whole prelude the pattern is being inverted,
transposed to different keys, etc. I would like to be able to
express these transformations simply and concisely, and I was
wondering if maybe what Heaviside did would be of any use in that
regard...]

--Jeff

Very interesting! My wife has a Heaviside bio from when she was researching him as a possible example of undiagnosed autism (of course, he lived in the days before the diagnosis existed). I will peruse it this weekend and see if there's any mention of musical notation. The book is "Oliver Heaviside: Sage in Solitude" by Paul J Nahin, IEEE Press, NY, 1987, ISBN 0-87942-238-6.

BTW, her page on Heaviside is http://neurodiversity.com/bio_heaviside.html.

- Dave

John Chalmers wrote:

>I've recently heard that the physicist Oliver Heaviside (who invented
>vector calculus, discovered the Heaviside layer, simplified Maxwell's
>equations, etc.) also invented a music notation. Does anyone have a
>reference or know anything about it?
>
>--john
> >

All this Heaviside stuff has been a real learning
experience for me -- I'd never heard of the guy!
I did a quick search for his music stuff, but didn't
come up with anything. Hopefully, one of us will
be able to track this down...

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Dave Seidel <dave@s...> wrote:

> Very interesting! My wife has a Heaviside bio from when she was
> researching him as a possible example of undiagnosed autism (of course,
> he lived in the days before the diagnosis existed).

As someone very fond of mad scientists, I diagnose him as a classic
mad scientist, along the lines of Tesla, except that he even looks the
part.

Agreed!

Gene Ward Smith wrote:

>As someone very fond of mad scientists, I diagnose him as a classic
>mad scientist, along the lines of Tesla, except that he even looks the
>part.
> >