* Astronomy

The last two instalments of Engineering on Purpose have focused on fundamental attributes of linear systems and the mathematics that describe them. The approach to the subject centred on simple linear time-invariant circuits (LTICs) with the implicit suggestion that the same techniques could apply to substantially more complex continuous-time circuit topologies and extend to sampled-data systems, as well.
The development of the underlying mathematics has, as their origins, the works of Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler (1707 1783), Italian mathematician and astronomer Joseph Lagrange (1736 1813), French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Laplace (1749 1827), and others of their age. Note that none of these giants in the history of science and mathematics focused their work either theoretical or applied on electromagnetism. Indeed, contemporary demonstrations of electric phenomena lacked the sort analytic rigor Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Fourier, and others applied to mechanics, astronomy, and optics.

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