Remembering the unit men - Hertz

Hello, I'm Jim Linton VK3PC with the latest in a series of brief looks at those who made discoveries and have their names as units of measurement.

The German physicist Heinrich Hertz made important contributions to mankind's knowledge of electromagnetism.

During experiments in 1887 and 88 he proved the existence of radio waves that had previously been mathematically shown by James Clerk Maxwell.

Hertz used a spark gap across an inductor and a loop antenna to send a signal to a loop of wire that also had a small gap.

Reports of his work inspired Marconi who recognised the commercial value of the discovery.

Hertz was the one who demonstrated how radio waves travelled through the ether. They became rightly known as Hertzian waves.

His original experiment was duplicated in many countries much to the amazement who witnessed this scientific discovery, and leading to the era of early wireless experimentation.

In the ultimate recognition, by the 1970s the term 'cycles per second' as a measurement of frequency kilocycles and Megacycles was replaced with the unit Hertz.