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Catt's theories should be partitioned into segments. Some are firmly held, others are conjecture. Even among the firmly held, the survival of one segment does not depend on the survival of another. For instance, the contrapuntal model for a charged capacitor can exist within Theory N, Theory H or Theory C. After 35 years of research, far longer than that normally taken for a researcher to arrive at a revolutionary theory, the product is not just one theoretical system which either succeeds or fails. Similarly, the assertion that a capacitor is a transmission line has no linkage with Theory C.
In some cases, different segments of Catt theories first appeared at times 20 years apart. For instance, the Catt Anomaly arose nearly a third of a century later than the discovery that a capacitor is a transmission line. The implications of the latter for classical e-m theory took a gestation period of 20 years.
The present situation has arisen because every one of Catt's theories, including those discovered 30 years ago and even those published 20 years ago, are unknown to 99% of electronic engineers and University Readers in Electromagnetism. Further, these people do not know that Catt and his co-authors have made any claims. Few university lecturers have heard of Theory C. Less than one electronic engineer in a thousand has heard the claim that a capacitor is a transmission line, so that the concept of self-resonant frequency is nonsense.
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Theory C. This is Catt's great contribution. It takes its place in a series of theories. Theory N. Electric current/charge causes field. Thhis is the traditional, reigning theory. Theory H. "We reverse this" - Oliver Heaviside, circa 1875. The travelling e-m field causes the electric current. Theory C. There is no electric current. - Catt, circa 1975. When a battery is connected via two wires to a lamp which glows, there is no electric current.
Energy current travelling at the speed of light is delivered to a capacitor guided by two conductors. It enters the capacitor, and reciprocates (vacillates) in the space between the plates at the speed of light for the dielectric. There is no mechanism for this reciprocating energy current to slow down. A steady charged capacitor contains energy current, all travelling at the speed of light.
When energy current travels towards a capacitor guided by two conductors, entry into the capacitor is exactly the same as entry into a transmission line of different characteristic impedance Zo. Classical theory treats the capacitor differently from the transmission line. In the former, displacement current must generate magnetic field. In the transmission line, displacement current (the front face of e TEM wave) must not generate magnetic field. This is the dislocation in classical theory, which destroys it.
This is highly conjectural, and obviously inadequate because two-dimensional, whereas crystals are 3D.
Catt's earliest attempts to write a text book exploited the vortex. However, Catt's later Wireless World july79 article juxtaposes the vortex against the slab. The vortex is now dead. The ruling model for Catt at all levels is the e-m wave or vacillating e-m wave. One might appear to restore the vortex by constructing a crystal out of interacting TEM waves, or an electron out of 'vortexing' TEM waves, but this is not the revival of the vortex. It is the exploitation of the slab/TEM wave, using what little we know about how TEM waves interact, which is very little indeed.
The concept of Maxwell, if he says anything at all, which is doubtful, actually asserting c as minimum as well as maximum velocity for anything, is a major contribution. More seriously, Catt has seen energy current travelling at the single velocity, and reasoned that all sorts of problems arise if other (slower) velocities are suggested.
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