Fourier, that great French mathematician/philosopher wuz right! I think
he
missed Madame guillotine.

Yes, he died in Paris in 1830.
As he wasn't into electric phenomena, he wouldn't have realised the
uses that the offshoot of his theory on the conduction of heat in solids (
Fourier Series) would be put to in later years.

So the next time you burn yourself, while
while holding a piece of wire you're in the
act of soldering, you will know who to blame.

No. Its the LACK of understanding of the Fourier Series which causes
blisters.

It is not surprising Fourier narrowly escaped the guiliotine. During that
era the French were ahead of the world in mathematics, statistics, physics,
etc. But the researchers were the idle rich of the nobility who did it as a
satisfying hobby.

For example, the idle rich used the technical subject of probability and
statistics to help themselves at the tables in the Parisian gaming houses.
This was not an activity likely to endear itself to the revolutionary mobs
behind the barracades in the streets of French cities. And so a number of
clever academics and noblemen fell to the embrace of Madamme Guilotine.
Napoleon soon put things on the right track.

Although Fourier Analysis was first applied to the conduction of heat by the
French philosophers it has, of course, since been applied to electrical
matters.

But it was Oliver Heaviside, a self-taught Englishman from the working
class, who many years later, around 1872 solved the mathematical problems
associated with the transient behaviour of electrical equipment and
transmission lines. He too ended up with an infinite series of terms, not
functions of frequency, but ot time.
----
Reg.