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Herbert E. Ives

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Herbert Eugene Ives
Ives circa 1913
BornJuly 21, 1882
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DiedNovember 13, 1953
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania
OccupationEngineer
Engineering career
Projectsfacsimile
videotelephony
television
AwardsEdward Longstreth Medal (1907, 1915 and 1919)
Frederic Ives Medal (1937)
Medal for Merit (1948)

Herbert Eugene Ives (July 21, 1882 – November 13, 1953) was a scientist and engineer who headed the development of facsimile and television systems at AT&T in the first half of the twentieth century. He was also a critic of the special theory of relativity, and attempted to disprove the theory by means of logical arguments and experiments. He is best known for the Ives–Stilwell experiment, which provided direct confirmation of special relativity's time dilation factor, although Ives himself interpreted the result as a refutation of special relativity.

Biography

Ives studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated in 1908. He wrote a 1920 book on aerial photography, while an Army reserve officer, in the aviation section. Ives was also an avid coin collector, and was President of the American Numismatic Society. He was president of the Optical Society of America from 1924 to 1925.

Like his father Frederic Eugene Ives, Herbert was an expert on color photography. In 1924, he transmitted and reconstructed the first color facsimile, using color separations. In 1927, he demonstrated 185-line long-distance television, transmitting the live video images of then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover via AT&T's experimental station 3XN in Whippany, New Jersey, allowing media reporters to both see and communicate with Hoover.

By 1930, his two-way television-telephone system (called an ikonophone —Greek: 'image-sound' ) was in regular experimental use, with Bell Labs' large New York City research facility devoting years of research and development through the 1930s, led by Dr. Ives with his team of more than 200 scientists, engineers and technicians. Bell Labs intended to develop videotelephony and television for both telecommunications and broadcast entertainment purposes. Ongoing research into combined audio and video telephones was extended by Bell Labs far past Ives' tenure at a cost of over US$500 million, eventually resulting in the deployment of AT&T's futuristic Picturephone.

Ives is best known for conducting the Ives–Stilwell experiment, which provided direct confirmation of special relativity's time dilation. However, Ives himself regarded his experiment as a proof of the existence of the ether and hence, as he erroneously suggested, a disproof of the theory of relativity. He was discouraged by the reaction of the scientific community that had interpreted his experiment in the way opposite to his expectations.

He then published a set of articles, in which he claimed to disprove special relativity by means of logical arguments. In 1952, he also claimed that Einstein's derivation of mass-energy equivalence was flawed, and that Einstein had not been the first to arrive at the famous equation E = mc^2. This paradoxical aspect of Ives's work was described by his friend, the noted physicist H. P. Robertson, who contributed the following summary of Ives's attitude toward special relativity in a biography of Ives:

"Ives' work in the basic optical field presents a rather curious anomaly, for although he considered that it disproved the special theory of relativity, the fact is that his experimental work offers one of the most valuable supports for this theory, and his numerous theoretical investigations are quite consistent with it… his deductions were in fact valid, but his conclusions were only superficially in contradiction with the relativity theory—their intricacy and formidable appearance were due entirely to Ives' insistence on maintaining an aether framework and mode of expression. I... was never able to convince him that since what he had was in fact indistinguishable in its predictions from the relativity theory within the domain of physics, it was in fact the same theory... some who have not penetrated to the essence of Ives' theoretical work have seized upon it as overthrowing the special theory of relativity, and have used it as an argument for a return to outmoded and invalid ways of thought."

Awards and honors

See also

References

  1. Herbert E. Ives, Airplane Photography, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1920.
  2. "Past Presidents of the Optical Society of America". Optical Society of America.
  3. D.N. Carson. "The Evolution of Picturephone Service", Bell Laboratories Record, Bell Labs, October 1968, pp.282-291.
  4. Washington Hails The Test: Operator There Puts Through the Calls as Scientists Watch, The New York Time, April 8, 1927, pg.20 (subscription)
  5. Herbert E. Ives, BairdTelevision.com website. Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  6. Videophone Encyclopædia Britannica, retrieved April 13, 2009 from Encyclopædia Britannica Online;
  7. H.E.Ives, G.R.Stilwell, An experimental study of the rate of a moving atomic clock, The Journal of Optical Society of America, 28, 7, 215-226 (1938).
  8. H.E.Ives, Historical note on the rate of moving atomic clock, The Journal of Optical Society of America, 37, 10, 810-813 (1947).
  9. H.E.Ives, The measurement of the velocity of light by signals sent in one direction, The Journal of Optical Society of America, 38, 10, 879-884 (1948).
  10. H.E.Ives, Lorentz-type transformations as derived from performable rod and clock operations, The Journal of Optical Society of America, 39, 9, 757-761 (1949).
  11. H.E.Ives, Extrapolation from Michelson-Morley experiment, The Journal of Optical Society of America, 40, 4, 185-191 (1950).
  12. See Fadner, W Did Einstein really discover E = Mc^2? Am. J. Physics 1988
  13. "Franklin Laureate Database - Edward Longstreth Medals for Herbert E. Ives". Franklin Institute. Retrieved November 16, 2011 (2011-11-16). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  14. Frederic Ives Medal / Quinn Prize, website of The Optical Society (formerly Optical Society of America, OSA). Retrieved August 17, 2011.
  15. Dean Turner and Richard Hazelett, eds., The Einstein Myth and the Ives Papers: A Counter-Revolution in Physics, Pasadena: Hope Publishing (1979).

External links

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