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3 unusual facts about Heinrich Hertz


Atmospheric thermodynamics

In 1884 Heinrich Hertz devised first atmospheric thermodynamic diagram (emagram).

Radio direction finder

The earliest experiments in RDF were carried out in 1888 when Heinrich Hertz discovered the directionality of an open loop of wire used as an antenna.

Vilhelm Bjerknes

Vilhelm Bjerknes became assistant to Heinrich Hertz in Bonn 1890–1891 and made substantial contributions to Hertz' work on electromagnetic resonance.


Crookes tube

It was used by Crookes, Johann Hittorf, Julius Plücker, Eugen Goldstein, Heinrich Hertz, Philipp Lenard and others to discover the properties of cathode rays, culminating in J.J. Thomson's 1897 identification of cathode rays as negatively charged particles, which were later named electrons.

German researchers E. Wiedemann, Heinrich Hertz, and Eugen Goldstein believed they were 'aether vibrations', some new form of electromagnetic waves, and were separate from what carried the current through the tube.

George FitzGerald

Along with Oliver Lodge, Oliver Heaviside and Heinrich Hertz, FitzGerald was a leading figure among the group of "Maxwellians" who revised, extended, clarified, and confirmed James Clerk Maxwell's mathematical theories of the electromagnetic field during the late 1870s and the 1880s.


see also