The Bell System Technical Journal 



Vol. XVII July, 1938 No. 3 



Hertz, the Discoverer of Electric Waves * 



By JULIAN BLANCHARD 



FIFTY 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 consum- 

 mate 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. Soon after reaching Munich he felt 

 compelled to put the matter before his parents, to whom he frequently 

 and confidingly wrote concerning his plans and his work. In a long 

 letter written in November, 1877, he said, "I really feel ashamed to 

 say it, but I must: now at the last moment I want to change all my 



* Published in Proc. I.R.E., May, 1938, Vol. 26, No. 5. 



327 



