Hertz, the Discoverer of Electric Waves

The Bell System Technical Journal Vol. XVII July, 1938 No. Hertz, the Discoverer of Electric Waves * By JULIAN BLANCHARD T 7 I F T Y years have passed since those memorable researches of the young German physicist, Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, which have come to be regarded as the starting point of radio. For it was he who first detected, and measured, electromagnetic waves in space--waves which had been predicted, it is true, but which had never before been observed. It is not to be claimed, of course, that the radio art would have failed to be born were it not for his genius, for we know that almost simultaneously the experiments of Lodge in England were pointing with certainty to the same discoveries, and the speculations of others were revolving around the possibility of generating electric waves. Yet it was the remarkably clear vision of Hertz, combined with his consummate persistence and skill, that won for him the prize and justly enshrined his name among the immortal men of science. So, upon this golden anniversary of the opening of a new epoch in the realm of communication, it is fitting that we pause to do honor to his memory and to consider anew the significance of his great accomplishment. The formal facts of Hertz's biography can be set down very quickly. He was born at Hamburg on February 22, 1857, his father an attorney, belonging to a family of successful merchants, his mother the daughter of a doctor of medicine, and the descendant of a long line of Lutheran ministers--all of cultural tastes and attainments on both sides.' At the age of twenty he went off to school at Munich, after a rather unorthodox preparatory training, supposedly to pursue an engineering career, but he was torn between this resolve and his natural inclination for the study of pure science.