Listening to the radio is a fun pastime. You can tune in to a particular frequency and enjoy the latest music, get new information, and hear funny stories. The radio exists thanks to the many scientists who developed the idea over a period of time.

First, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered and demonstrated that a wire carrying a current could deflect a magnetised compass needle, thereby showing the connection between electricity and magnetism in the early 1800s. This is according to Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia.

In the 1860s, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell developed the theory of electromagnetism. According to ThoughtCo, an online knowledge dissemination platform, German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz then proved Maxwell’s theory and discovered electromagnetic waves, including radio waves in the late 1880s.

According to the British Telecommunications company, Hertz did not use his radio waves as a communication medium because he and other scientists did not think that the waves were of any value. However, because of his contribution, the unit measurement for radio frequencies is called a Hertz.

A few years later, while conducting experiments on wave length, British physicist and writer Sir Oliver Lodge came across Hertz’s findings. He presented the findings at the British Association of Science, Oxford University during a memorial lecture on Hertz on 1 June, 1894.

Up to this point, the radio waves were still not being used for communication. It was Indian physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose who first publicly demonstrated the use of radio waves for communication in November 1894. This is according to Wikipedia. Bose went on to make an antennae-like apparatus to aid with frequency moderation. For his inventions and work, Bose did not apply for a patent because he wanted the knowledge to be open to everyone for practical use. 

Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi and Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla used knowledge discovered by previous scientists to make radio frequencies for communication practical as known today. They both received patents, Marconi in England in 1896 and Tesla in America in 1897.

According to knowledge resource How Stuff Works, the scientists were involved in rivalry and later, legal rebuttal over the patent for invention of the radio for many years until the patent was finally granted to Tesla after 1943.

According to web-based Engineers Garage, many centuries since electromagnetic waves were first perceived, several improvements are still being made towards radio transmission. Physical radio devices are still in use but radio frequencies can also be obtained on the phone via the internet or satellite so that one can listen to radio stations all over the world.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com