Sidney Bertram - Revision history

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	\| birth_date = {{birth date\|1913\|07\|07\|mf=y}}		\| birth_date = {{birth date\|1913\|07\|07\|mf=y}}
	\| birth_place = Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada		\| birth_place = Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
	\| death_date = {{death date\|2012\|07\|30\|~~mf=y~~}}		\| death_date = {{death date and age\|2012\|7\|30\|1913\|7\|7}}
	\| death_place = Scotts Valley, California, United States		\| death_place = Scotts Valley, California, United States
	\| residence = Scotts Valley, CA, United States		\| residence = Scotts Valley, CA, United States

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			[[Category:Electromagnetism]]

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ClaudeBot: Rewrite in encyclopedic third person; add sourced biography (birth/death, education, WWII sonar, UNAMACE photogrammetry, Cal Poly), contributions, honors, infobox fields, external links; preserve image, abstracts, wikilinks, categories

2026-07-17T12:51:53Z

Rewrite in encyclopedic third person; add sourced biography (birth/death, education, WWII sonar, UNAMACE photogrammetry, Cal Poly), contributions, honors, infobox fields, external links; preserve image, abstracts, wikilinks, categories

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	\| image = Sidney Bertram 71.jpg		\| image = Sidney Bertram 71.jpg
	\| alt = Sidney Bertram		\| alt = Sidney Bertram
			\| birth_name = Sydney Abramovitch
	\| birth_date = {{birth date\|1913\|07\|07\|mf=y}}		\| birth_date = {{birth date\|1913\|07\|07\|mf=y}}
	\| residence = Scotts ~~Bailey~~, CA, United States		\| birth_place = Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
			\| death_date = {{death date\|2012\|07\|30\|mf=y}}
			\| death_place = Scotts Valley, California, United States
			\| residence = Scotts Valley, CA, United States
	\| nationality = USA		\| nationality = USA
	\| known_for = [[Electromagnetism]]		\| fields = [[Electrical engineering]], [[Physics]]
			\| workplaces = University of California Division of War Research; Boeing; Ohio State University; Ramo-Wooldridge (Bunker-Ramo Corporation); Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
			\| alma_mater = California Institute of Technology; Ohio State University
			\| known_for = PPI scanning sonar; automated photogrammetry (UNAMACE); [[Electromagnetism]]
	}}		}}

	~~In 1987~~, ~~when I retired from Cal Poly~~, ~~I had a number of projects in mind that would keep me busy. First, I~~ was ~~determined to see my E&M ideas in print. The math book started when Suzanne was in the 7th grade needed finishing and I had~~ a ~~favorite electronic project in mind~~ -~~- to develop a device that, connected to a telephone, would present~~ a ~~recognizable picture~~ of the voice so that deaf individuals could use it to communicate with anyone without the need for special gadgetry at the other end. Such a device had been demonstrated at Bell Labs around 1950 and the new computer technology promised to make it more effective, much smaller and less expensive. Its development would require me to become more familiar with modern electronic components; my work after WW II had been essentially all system design, with others doing the detailed design, so I had lost contact with the component technology. So far my ideas on this haven't led to much -- but I haven't spent much time on ~~it either. Following a letter to the editor of the IEEE Spectrum~~, ~~(Feb. 1988)~~, ~~that described my WW II Sonar contributions I received a call from a Mr. Don Davis who runs classes~~, ~~Seminars~~ and ~~Symposia directed to acoustic measurements; it seems that the FM Sonar was similar in principle to a very modern device used in acoustic measurements. Mr. Davis visited me twice in~~ San Luis Obispo ~~and, at his invitation, I attended a Symposium in Nashville, Tennessee where I was very well received and visited the factory where the measuring device is made and the farm where~~ he ~~runs seminars related~~ to ~~the equipment. Mr. Davis has served as a publicity agent for me, publishing numerous items about my visits~~ and ~~notes that I have sent him~~. I have tried to publish a paper in that area but so far with no success. A reviewer of the earlier papers now agrees that I was right all along -- but it has yet to be approved for publication. (The most recent version -- 1996 --will probably be "published" as an a technical note added to their Newsletter of Davis's group.)		'''Sidney Bertram''' (born '''Sydney Abramovitch'''; July 7, 1913 – July 30, 2012) was a Canadian-born American [[Electrical engineering\|electrical engineer]] and physicist. Over a career of more than fifty years he worked on wartime sonar, guidance systems, and automated photogrammetry, and later taught electricity and magnetism at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In retirement he pursued an independent classical approach to [[Electromagnetism\|electromagnetics]] and [[Relativity\|relativity]].

	It is now some years after I started this (4/6/96). The math book was completed and copies were made available to a number of people and a couple of publishers, but so far it has not been published. The math book is being revised as a math and science book.		==Biography==

	~~A version~~ of the ~~E&amp~~;~~M paper has been~~ "published" in "~~Galilean Electrodynamics~~" ~~a publication for the dissidents who don~~'~~t agree with modern physics~~ -- in ~~particular~~ with ~~relativity theory~~. ~~Two Addenda followed~~ and ~~have been incorporated~~ in a ~~new version~~. ~~I have hopes~~ that ~~it is strong enough~~ to ~~overcome~~ the ~~objections~~ of ~~many in~~ the ~~physics community~~. ~~My paper showing that~~ the Lorentz transform is an orthogonal conical transformation ~~has also been published~~ in Galilean Electrodynamics.		Bertram was born Sydney Abramovitch in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; the family name was changed after they moved to California in 1923. He completed a vocational electrical course in high school, graduating in February 1930, then enrolled in the semi-professional electrical engineering program at Los Angeles City College, from which he received an Associate of Arts degree in 1932.

			From 1933 to 1936 he taught at the Radio Institute of California in Los Angeles, working first as a laboratory instructor and later teaching radio theory. He re-entered the California Institute of Technology and earned a B.S. in electrical engineering, with honors, in 1938. After a year with a small geophysics company, he undertook graduate study at Ohio State University, receiving an M.S. in 1941; his thesis, "Calculation of Axially Symmetric Fields," was published in two papers cited in the literature on electron optics. He completed a Ph.D. in physics at Ohio State University in 1951 while teaching at its Wright Field Graduate Center.

			In 1942 Bertram joined the University of California Division of War Research at San Diego, where he converted an experimental FM fire-control sonar into a PPI scanning sonar. In the summer of 1945 nine submarines used the sonar to penetrate mine fields and enter the Sea of Japan. Following the war he spent a year at Boeing working on guidance elements for a "ground-to-air pilotless aircraft," leaving in 1946 to become an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Ohio State University's Wright Field Graduate Center.

			In 1957 he joined Ramo-Wooldridge (later the Bunker-Ramo Corporation). Beginning in 1960 he led a program to automate the extraction of topographic data from aerial photographs, which culminated in 1964 with delivery of the first Universal Automatic Map Compilation System (UNAMACE), a computer-controlled photogrammetric instrument. He presented papers on the system in Portugal in 1964 and Switzerland in 1968, published in the International Archives of Photogrammetry and in Photogrammetric Engineering.

			He later served as a professor of electricity and magnetism at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, retiring in 1987. He died at his home in Scotts Valley, California, on July 30, 2012, at the age of 99.

			==Scientific contributions==

			During World War II Bertram designed the scanning switch that made the outputs of the twenty range filters of the PPI scanning sonar sequentially available to the display, work for which he received a Bureau of Ships Citation. At Ramo-Wooldridge and Bunker-Ramo he was a principal designer of the UNAMACE automated photogrammetry system, which measured ground elevations from conventional aerial photography to roughly one ten-thousandth of the flight altitude and made about fifty measurements per second.

			After retiring, Bertram developed a classical, non-relativistic interpretation of electromagnetics. He argued for a rational or classical basis for electromagnetic phenomena and analyzed the [[Lorentz transformation\|Lorentz transform]] as an orthogonal conical transformation. Several of these papers appeared in ''Galilean Electrodynamics'', a journal associated with critics of modern relativity theory, and he compiled the material as a work titled "Classical Derivation of Relativity." These proposals lie outside the scientific mainstream and have not been accepted by the broader physics community.

			==Honors==

			* Bureau of Ships Citation, for the invention of the scanning switch used in the PPI scanning sonar (World War II)
			* Associate of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), 1936

	==Abstracts==		==Abstracts==

	* 2008 - "[[The Lorentz Transform]]"		* 2008 - "[[The Lorentz Transform]]"
	* 2002 - "[[Extended Lifetimes and Electromagnetics]]"		* 2002 - "[[Extended Lifetimes and Electromagnetics]]"
	* 2001 - "[[A Classical Basis for Electromagnetics]]"		* 2001 - "[[A Classical Basis for Electromagnetics]]"
	* 2000 - "[[The Lorentz Transform]]"		* 2000 - "[[The Lorentz Transform]]"
	* 1997 - "[[A Rational Basis for Electromagnetics]]"		* 1997 - "[[A Rational Basis for Electromagnetics]]"
	* 1997 - "[[Wave-Particle Interactions and the Lorentz Transform]]"		* 1997 - "[[Wave-Particle Interactions and the Lorentz Transform]]"
	* 1996 - "[[The Differential Forces of Electromagnetism]]"		* 1996 - "[[The Differential Forces of Electromagnetism]]"
	* 1992 - "[[Faraday's and Ampere's Laws]]"		* 1992 - "[[Faraday's and Ampere's Laws]]"

			==External links==

			* [http://www.bertramweb.com/aaasid_bio/mylife.html "My Life as an Engineer" by Dr. Sidney Bertram]
			* [https://ethw.org/First-Hand:From_Radio_Engineering_to_War-Time_Research "From Radio Engineering to War-Time Research" (first-hand account, Engineering and Technology History Wiki)]

	[[Category:Scientist\|Bertram Sidney]]		[[Category:Scientist\|Bertram Sidney]]
	[[Category:New Energy\|Bertram Sidney]]		[[Category:New Energy\|Bertram Sidney]]
	[[Category:Relativity\|Bertram Sidney]]		[[Category:Relativity\|Bertram Sidney]]

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{{Infobox scientist
| name = Sidney Bertram
| image = Sidney Bertram 71.jpg
| alt = Sidney Bertram
| birth_date = {{birth date|1913|07|07|mf=y}}
| residence = Scotts Bailey, CA, United States
| nationality = USA
| known_for = [[Electromagnetism]]
}}

In 1987, when I retired from Cal Poly, I had a number of projects in mind that would keep me busy. First, I was determined to see my E&M ideas in print. The math book started when Suzanne was in the 7th grade needed finishing and I had a favorite electronic project in mind -- to develop a device that, connected to a telephone, would present a recognizable picture of the voice so that deaf individuals could use it to communicate with anyone without the need for special gadgetry at the other end. Such a device had been demonstrated at Bell Labs around 1950 and the new computer technology promised to make it more effective, much smaller and less expensive. Its development would require me to become more familiar with modern electronic components; my work after WW II had been essentially all system design, with others doing the detailed design, so I had lost contact with the component technology. So far my ideas on this haven't led to much -- but I haven't spent much time on it either. Following a letter to the editor of the IEEE Spectrum, (Feb. 1988), that described my WW II Sonar contributions I received a call from a Mr. Don Davis who runs classes, Seminars and Symposia directed to acoustic measurements; it seems that the FM Sonar was similar in principle to a very modern device used in acoustic measurements. Mr. Davis visited me twice in San Luis Obispo and, at his invitation, I attended a Symposium in Nashville, Tennessee where I was very well received and visited the factory where the measuring device is made and the farm where he runs seminars related to the equipment. Mr. Davis has served as a publicity agent for me, publishing numerous items about my visits and notes that I have sent him. I have tried to publish a paper in that area but so far with no success. A reviewer of the earlier papers now agrees that I was right all along -- but it has yet to be approved for publication. (The most recent version -- 1996 --will probably be "published" as an a technical note added to their Newsletter of Davis's group.)

It is now some years after I started this (4/6/96). The math book was completed and copies were made available to a number of people and a couple of publishers, but so far it has not been published. The math book is being revised as a math and science book.

A version of the E&M paper has been "published" in "Galilean Electrodynamics" a publication for the dissidents who don't agree with modern physics -- in particular with relativity theory. Two Addenda followed and have been incorporated in a new version. I have hopes that it is strong enough to overcome the objections of many in the physics community. My paper showing that the Lorentz transform is an orthogonal conical transformation has also been published in Galilean Electrodynamics.

==Abstracts==

* 2008 - "[[The Lorentz Transform]]"
* 2002 - "[[Extended Lifetimes and Electromagnetics]]"
* 2001 - "[[A Classical Basis for Electromagnetics]]"
* 2000 - "[[The Lorentz Transform]]"
* 1997 - "[[A Rational Basis for Electromagnetics]]"
* 1997 - "[[Wave-Particle Interactions and the Lorentz Transform]]"
* 1996 - "[[The Differential Forces of Electromagnetism]]"
* 1992 - "[[Faraday's and Ampere's Laws]]"

[[Category:Scientist]]
[[Category:New Energy]]
[[Category:Relativity]]