Proving the existence of radio waves

HERTZ, Heinrich.

Ueber sehr schnelle electrische Schwingungen.

Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1887.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Item #001875

Über sehr schnelle electrische Schwingungen; Nachtrag zu der Abhandlung über sehr schnelle electrische Schwingungen; Über einen Einfluss des ultravioletten Lichtes auf die electrische Entladung. In: Annalen der Physik 31, neue Folge, 1887, pp. 421-448, 543-544, 983-1000. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1887. 8vo (209x136 mm). Contemporary cardboard, spine gilt with gilt paper label. Whole volume, viii, 1048 pp., including half title, general title with old library stamp (Gymnasium Ernestinum Gothanum). Interior clean with only minor occasional spotting. A fine copy. ----

Dibner Heralds of Science 71; See PMM 377; Norman 1060. - FIRST EDITION of Hertz's first paper on electromagnetic waves, with the second journal publication of his second paper. "When Hertz entered physics in the 1870's, electrodynamics was in a disorganized state. Theories had multiplied in its fifty years of development, and each had its own following... To encourage... the experimental decision between electrodynamic theories Helmholtz proposed through the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1879 a second prize problem, this one in connection with the behavior of unclosed Circuits in Maxwell's theory... Although at the time Hertz declined to try the Berlin Academy problem... he kept the problem constantly in mind; and in 1886 shortly after arriving in Karisruhe he found that the Riess or Knochenhauer induction coils he was using in lecture demonstrations were precisely the means he needed for undertaking Helmholtz' test of Maxwell's theory... By the end of 1888 he had gone beyond the terms of Helniholtz' problem and had confinned the existence of electromagnetic waves in air... He published a total of nine papers from his electrical researches in Karlsruhe. They drew immediate, widespread recognition.." (DSB). -- In his first paper Hertz described the apparatus that he had devised for the detection and measurement of electromagnetic waves, the key to his later successes. To prove that electrical waves can be projected though space it was necessary to devise a means of both producing the waves and, more difficult at the time, of detecting them once produced. For this Hertz used "an effect as old as the discovery of electricity itself-the electric spark. By inducing the waves to produce an electric spark at a distance, with no apparent connexion between the oscillator and the spark gap, and by moving the sparking apparatus so that the length of the spark varied, he proved beyond question the passage of electric waves through space" (PMIVI). "Hertz's proof was the result of his experimental inventiveness... He regarded his detection device as his most original stroke, since no amount of theory would have predicted that it would work" (DSB). In his paper on ultraviolet light Hertz showed that UV light is alone responsible for the photoelectric effect, an effect which he foresaw as having "profound theoretical meaning for the connection of light and electricity" (op.cit.). The volume also includes papers by Max Planck, W C. Rontgen, R. Bunsen, and others.

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