Special:Badtitle/NS90:Milestone-Proposal talk:First generation and experimental proof of electromagnetic waves 1886-1888./Hertz milestone proposal/reply (6)

I support the milestone and its wording and I vote to approve it subject to the following. I am surprised there is no mention of Oliver Lodge in the supporting materials since he is usually credited with bringing Hertz into popular recognition. I would add some references as appropriate.

The following is a clip from an exhibit about Lodge that was at the Antique Wireless Association Museum in 2010. The exhibit had signed copies of books, documents, etc. This clip includes the key points and relevant publication titles pertaining to Hertz and Lodge---

"On June 1, 1894, Sir Oliver Lodge delivered his historic memorial lecture “On the Work Of Hertz” at the Royal Institution in London. This landmark lecture ignited the study of wireless telegraphy and the search for a practical commercial means of radio communication. Lodge’s lecture was reprinted in 1894, and then published in 1896 as “Signalling Across Space Without Wires: Being a Description of the Work of Hertz And His Successors”. The Fourth Edition was published in 1909 by The Electrician Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd. in London and was presented by Lodge to the Author’s Club in London, a premier gathering place of well known authors founded in 1891. It includes Lodge’s later remarks concerning the development of wireless telegraphy.

Lodge’s 1894 lecture was the first time Hertzian waves had been publicly demonstrated. He used Lord Kelvin’s mirror galvanometer to forcefully show that his research confirmed Hertz’s independent findings validating Maxwell’s theories. Lodge demonstrated the refraction, reflection and polarization of electric waves, and their passage through stone walls from room to room. These experiments, with some variations, were repeated on August 1, 1894 at meetings of the British Association in Oxford at which Morse code signals were sent by radio for the very first time. Although the intended purpose of the lectures was to expound on the theory of electric waves, they created a sensation by showing the capabilities of wireless telegraphy. The lectures are credited with focusing the interests of many notable engineers and scientists on wireless telegraphy including: Dr. A. Muirhead and Captain Henry B. Jackson (R.N.) in Great Britian, Professor A.S. Popoff in Russia, Nikola Tesla in the U.S., and Augusto Righi (Guillermo Marconi’s mentor) in Bologna, Italy. Yet, Lodge did not pursue his discoveries, and the commercial development of wireless telegraphy ultimately occurred only after Marconi and others found ways to make it feasible. Even so, it was through his now famous lecture that Sir Oliver Lodge is credited with initiating the age of wireless telegraphy and the birth of radio." --Dave Bart