Abstract
AMONG the many developments of science during the past thirty years, none has left a deeper impression on the lay and scientific mind alike than the remarkable growth of wireless as a means of longdistance transmissions of signals, speech, music, and even of pictures. The history of this new method of signalling is of special interest to all scientific men, for it illustrates in a vivid way the value of a close cooperation between pure and applied science for rapid progress. The first great chapter in the history of radio-communication we owe to the genius of Maxwell, who, in a paper communicated to this Society in 1864 entitled “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,” showed that electric and magnetic effects cannot be produced instantaneously at a distance, but must be propagated through space with the velocity of light. He demonstrated the wave-nature of these electrical disturbances in space and the mode of their propagation. It is no exaggeration to say that the complete theory of electrical waves and their transmission in space is contained in his famous equations, and that too at a time when no experimental methods were known of producing or studying such electrical waves.
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RUTHERFORD, E. Electric Waves and their Propagation1. Nature 118, 809–811 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118809a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118809a0