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Concept
History of radio
Summary
The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy". Later radio history increasingly involves matters of broadcasting.
Invention of radio
In an 1864 presentation, published in 1865, James Clerk Maxwell proposed theories of electromagnetism, with mathematical proofs, that showed that light and predicted that radio and x-rays were all types of electromagnetic waves propagating through free space.
Between 1886 and 1888 Heinrich Rudolf Hertz published the results of experiments wherein he was able to transmit electromagnetic waves (radio waves) through the air, proving Maxwell's electromagnetic theory.
After their discovery many scientists and inventors experimented with transmitting and detecting "Hertzian waves" (it would take almost 20 years for the term "radio" to be universally adopted for this type of electromagnetic radiation). Maxwell's theory showing that light and Hertzian electromagnetic waves were the same phenomenon at different wavelengths led "Maxwellian" scientists such as John Perry, Frederick Thomas Trouton and Alexander Trotter to assume they would be analogous to optical light.
Following Hertz' untimely death in 1894, British physicist and writer Oliver Lodge presented a widely covered lecture on Hertzian waves at the Royal Institution on June 1 of the same year. Lodge focused on the optical qualities of the waves and demonstrated how to transmit and detect them (using an improved variation of French physicist Édouard Branly's detector Lodge named the "coherer"). Lodge further expanded on Hertz' experiments showing how these new waves exhibited like light refraction, diffraction, polarization, interference and standing waves, confirming that Hertz' waves and light waves were both forms of Maxwell's electromagnetic waves.
Official source
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