Heinrich Hertz

Heinrich Hertz (February 22, 1857 – January 1, 1894)

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by Maxwell. He was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures that ruled out all other known wireless phenomena.

Electromagnetic research

In 1886, Hertz developed the Hertz antenna receiver. This is a set of terminals which is not electrically grounded for its operation. He also developed a transmitting type of dipole antenna, which was a center-fed driven element for transmitting UHF radio waves. These antennas are the simplest practical antennas from a theoretical point of view.

In 1887, Hertz experimented with radio waves in his laboratory. These actions followed Michelson's 1881 experiment (precursor to the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment) which did not detect the existence of aether drift, Hertz altered the Maxwell's equations to take this view into account for electromagnetism. Hertz used a Ruhmkorff coil-driven spark gap and one meter wire pair as a radiator. Capacity spheres were present at the ends for circuit resonance adjustments. His receiver, a precursor to the dipole antenna, was a simple half-wave dipole antenna for shortwaves. Hertz published his work in a book titled: Electric waves: being researches on the propagation of electric action with finite velocity through space.