Heinrich Hertz

Hello! My name is Heinrich Hertz. I was born a long, long time ago, on February 22nd, 1857, in a city called Hamburg in Germany. Even when I was a little boy, I was very curious. I loved figuring out how things worked. I would build little machines and do science experiments right in my own room. My family saw how much I loved science and knew that I was going to grow up to be a scientist.

When I grew up, I went to a big school called a university to study science. Later, I became a professor, which is like a teacher for grown-ups. I was fascinated by electricity and loved watching sparks jump from one metal ball to another. Around that time, a famous scientist named James Clerk Maxwell had a wonderful idea. He thought there were invisible waves, kind of like ripples in a pond, that could travel through the air. But nobody had ever proven his idea was true. I thought to myself, 'I am going to be the one to find those invisible waves!'.

So, in the year 1886, I got to work in my laboratory. I set up a special experiment. First, I built a machine that could make a big electric spark. Then, all the way across the room, I placed a simple loop of wire. When I made the spark jump on my machine, something amazing happened. A tiny little spark jumped across the wire loop on the other side of the room, even though nothing was touching it. I had done it! I had proven that those invisible electromagnetic waves were real. They had traveled right through the air from my machine to the wire loop.

I lived to be 36 years old. Even though my life was not very long, I am so happy that my discovery of these invisible waves helped other inventors create wonderful things. Because of my work, we now have radios, televisions, cell phones, and even Wi-Fi. To honor my discovery, the way we measure radio waves is called a 'hertz.' The next time you listen to music on the radio, you can think of me and the invisible 'Hertzian waves' flying through the air to bring you the sound.