Origins of the Equivalent Circuit Concept: The Current-Source Equivalent

As described in my previous paper [1], the voltage-source equivalent was first derived by Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) in a 1853 paper [2]. Exactly thirty years later in 1883, Léon Charles Thévenin (1857–1926) published the same result [3, 4] apparently unaware of Helmholtz’s work. The generality of the equivalent source network was not appreciated until forty-three years later. Then, in 1926, Edward Lawry Norton (1898–1983) wrote an internal Bell Laboratory technical report [5] that described in passing in the usefulness in some applications of using the currentsource form of the equivalent circuit. In that same year, Hans Ferdinand Mayer (1895–1980) published the same result [6] and detailed it fully. As detailed subsequently, these people intertwine in interesting ways.