The early history of electronics III. Prehistory of radiotelegraphy

Before radiotelegraphy could become a reality, it had to he thought of; a workable detector of electromagnetic waves had to be discovered; and the results obtained by Hertz had to be disseminated to a wider audience. In earlier installments in this series, we saw how the work of Hertz and his predecessors had led an electrical engineer to ask whether waves could not be used for the transmission of power or of telephone messages. That suggestion had been made in private in 1889, but other, better-founded proposals began to find their way into public print almost immediately.