After his attempt to justify the Maxwellian equations on theoretical grounds, Hertz turned his attention to the possibility of verifying them by direct experiment. His interest in the matter had first been aroused some years previously, when the Berlin Academy proposed as a prize subject "To establish experimentally a relation between electromagnetic actions and the polarization of dielectrics." Helmholtz suggested to Hertz that he should attempt the solution; but at the time he saw no way of bringing phenomena of this kind within the limits of observation. From this time forward, however, the idea of electric oscillations was continually present to his mind; and in the spring of 1886 he noticed an effect[1] which formed the starting-point of his later researches. When an open circuit was formed of a piece of copper wire, bent into the form of a rectangle, so that the ends of the wire were separated only by a short air-gap, and when this open circuit was connected by a wire with any point of a circuit through which the spark-discharge of an induction-coil was taking place, it was found that a spark passed in the air-gap of the open circuit. This was explained by supposing that the change of potential, which is propagated along the connecting wire from the induction-coil, reaches one end of the open circuit before it reaches the other, so that a spark passes between them; and the phenomenon therefore was regarded as indicating a finite velocity of propagation of electric potential along wires.[2]
- ↑ Ann. d. Phys. xxxi (1887), p. 421. Hertz's Electric Waves, translated by D. E. Jones, p. 29.
- ↑ Unknown to Hertz, the transmission of electric waves along wires had been observed in 1870 by Wilhelm von Bezold, München Sitzungsberichte, i (1870), p. 113; Phil. Mag. xl (1870), p. 42. "If," he wrote at the conclusion of a series of experiments, "electrical waves be sent into a wire insulated at the end, they will be reflected at that end. The phenomena which accompany this process in alternating discharges appear to owe their origin to the interference of the advancing and reflected waves," and, "an electric discharge travels with the same rapidity in wires of equal length, without reference to the materials of which these wires are made."
The subject was investigated by O. J. Lodge and A. P. Chattock at almost the same time as Hertz's experiments were being curried out: mention was made of their researches at the meeting of the British Association in 1888.
