Historical corner column

Abstract

Much has been written about Heinrich Hertz and Guglielmo Marconi. In particular, two recent papers appeared in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine (G. Smith, 58, 5, 2016, pp. 98–108; and T. Simpson, 60, 4, 2018, pp. 132–140). These thoughtfully analyzed Hertz's apparatus. With such an apparatus, Hertz, within his laboratory walls in 1888, gave experimental evidence of the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell in his Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, presented in 1864.