In 1953 Olle Karlqvist (Sweden) discovered a fundamental magnetic phenomenon when he was designing a magnetic storage and the ferromagnetic surface layer to the magnetic drum memory for the BESK computer. [1] When designing a magnetic memory store you have to study the ferromagnetic layer and the variation of this field with permeabliity, airgap, layer thickness and other influencing factors. The problem is definity non-linear and extremely difficult to solve. Karlqvist gap discovery shows that non-linear could be solved in a linear boundary value for the two-dimensional staic field and the one-dimensional transient field. This linear calculation gives a first approximation, which in some case seems to be satisfacory. He published his discovery Calculation of the magnetic field in ferromagnetic layer of a magnetic drum at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). [2]
The magnetic phenomenon discovered is nowadays called the Karlqvist Gap or Karlqvist Field. [3]