Hertz Detects Radio Waves

1887

In a Karlsruhe laboratory, Heinrich Hertz generated and detected the electromagnetic waves Maxwell had predicted on paper a quarter-century before. A spark at one end of his room produced a spark at the other. Asked what use it was, Hertz said: none. A decade later Marconi would find one. Hertz died at thirty-six, never knowing that his discovery would become the foundation of radio, television, and wireless communication.