Introduction

Abstract

Solitary waves were discovered by the naval architect, John Scott Russell, more than a hundred and fifty years ago while he was surveying the Union Canal near Edinburgh. While riding beside the canal, he saw a barge stop abruptly after hitting an underwater obstacle, and then a rounded heap of water perhaps a foot and a half high emerged from the wavy chaos at its bow. He waited for the wave to disperse, and waited, and waited — and then put the spurs to his horse. He followed it for nearly a mile, a wave propagating at a steady rate without change in shape or speed, until he lost it in the windings of the canal.

“Sitting on the gas tank of an aeroplane ⋯ I sensed the ridiculous inanity of the old syntax inherited from Homer.” — Filipino Tommaso Marinetti, The Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature(1912)