Heinrich Hertz
FEB 22, 2016
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031158
On this day in 1857 Heinrich Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany. In the 1880s he performed experiments that confirmed James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. Hertz generated what are now called radio waves and showed that they behave just like heat and visible light—they are all varieties of electromagnetic radiation. The hertz (Hz) is now a unit of measurement denoting the frequency, or number of cycles per second, of light and sound waves, computer processors, and more.
Date in History: 22 February 1857
© 2016 American Institute of Physics
