Physics, Information, and Communication
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Key Papers in Physics, Information, and Communication
Contents
Gabor's early Papers. In 1950 Dennis Gabor published two versions of a paper titled "Communication Theory and Physics." The motivation for this work was given in his Introduction as: "Some years ago I have proposed a mathematical framework for the representation of signals (Gabor, 1946). I have been rightly criticized for having left out noise, which is an essential feature of all communications. This will be remedied here, and at the same time the description will be brought in line with modern physics." The 1946 paper, titled "Communication Theory" is available "here"
The paper was published first in Phil. Mag. 1950. Then, with some modifications, but without the Appendices from the Phil. Mag. version, in the Transactions of the IRE Professional Group on Information Theory 1953. This paper is not readily available in a reasonably readable form. (IEEE Xplore has the PDF of the IRE version available, but because the pages were scanned as if they were US letter size, some of the text is missing. (In addition, this version cannot be found directly on the IEEE Xplore site. In can only be located through a Google search on the Journal title.) Therefore I have converted the IRE paper and the Appendices from the Phil. Mag. paper into TeX. I also corrected a number of typos. Below are the TeX version with the Appendices and a correct scan of the original IRE paper:
Converted version with Appendices: "Communication Theory and Physics (edited)."
Original scan of the IRE version: "Communication Theory and Physics."
J. Ville's Analytic Signal. The paper "Théorie et Applications de la Notion de Signal Analytique," by J. Ville provides a formal foundation for time-frequency analysis based on the ``analytic signal.'' These results were used by Gabor in the paper referred to above. The Ville paper is quite hard to find: only a few libraries have the 1948 volume of Cables et Transmissions. I converted the original converted to TeX due to the poor physical quality of the original. I have also translated the paper. Separate copies are available: the original in French and the translation in English.
Einstein on Gravitation. This fundamental paper by Einstein from 1911, "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," by A. Einstein, Ann. d. Phys. 35, pp. 898-908, 1911, has not been readily available in English. I translated the paper from the original. Nor has the 1912 paper, which I have also translated, "Is There a Gravitational Effect which is analogous to Electrodynamic Induction?. This originally appeared as " Gibt es eine Gravitationswirkung, die der electrodynamischen Inductionswirkung analog ist?,” Vierteljahrsschrift fur gerichtliche Medizin und offentliches Sanitatswesen (44) p. 37–40. 1912.
Ampere's Treatise on Electromagnetism, 1826.
It was recently found that the Google Books images of Ampere's Treatise do not contain the figures. These figures were presented on two large plates (about 11"x17") and therefore they were skipped. The figures are essential to understanding since the Treatise is a description of the experiments shown in the figures, and the theory deduced from the results of the experiments.
I have converted the original French text to TeX and, incorporated the plates and figures in the PDF. This version was produced from the First Edition, 1826, and also from the Second Edition, 1883. Essentially, I started from the First Edition using high resolution images of the figures, but checked the Second edition and its figures for corrections. The two plates were edited to improve the image quality and to correct a number of typos, and a set of individual figures was generated from the plates. This facilitates viewing the figures, using hyperlinks, while reading the text.
This copy is, I hope, fairly nearly correct. However, it would benefit from independent proof reading. Reports of any problems would be much appreciated.
The English translation is also complete. In May 2015 I updated the translation based in large part on comments from Andre Koch Torres Assis. Quite a few sections are now considerably clearer. Just one quite obvious typo was found and corrected.
I have also put together a zip file which contains the French and English PDFs without the plates and figures, and a folder containing both plates and all the figures as individual PDFs. This should provide convenience in reading and it reduces the size by not duplicating the figures. Both the French and English PDFs contain hyperlinks to the plates and to each individual figure.
Some historical notes: This Spring (21013) has been pretty busy, but I have had a chance to do some editing of the English translation. In particular, I worked on Sections 18 and 22, but also made some corrections in other parts of the text. July update: I edited the English Sections 23-26. December 2012 update: I made some cleanup of the front matter, headings, and inclusion of new information from Andre Koch Torres Assis, who has produced a Portuguese translation and done other work in this area. This is described more fully in the Preface. However, I also finally realized that I had not carefully compared the "Notes" at the end of the First and Second editions. They are actually substantially different, with the one from the Second edition containing important information. So, I have replaced the Notes with the one from the Second edition. Both the French and English versions are now, June 2015, in reasonable shape. I made some recent changes based in part on comments from Andre Koch Torres Assis who has a very extensive background of study of all of Ampere's works. Further comments are, of course, welcome.