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May 1930 Radio-Craft
 [Table
of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Craft,
published 1929 - 1953. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.
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James Clerk Maxwell's inception of
the theory of electromagnetic radiation is compared in this 1930 Radio-Craft
magazine article to if Christopher Columbus had conceptualized the existence of
America and mapped its features based solely on observations of how the known oceans
and land masses interacted. I have always been amazed at the ability of people who
formulate entirely new theories of science, finance, medicine, etc., and manage
to detail and support their ideas with hard data and mathematics. Einstein did so
with relativity, Dalton did so with atomic structure, Darwin did so with evolution,
Pasteur did so with germ theory; the list is long. There are lots of geniuses out
there, but a relative few change the world.
See other "Men Who Made Radio" :
Sir Oliver Lodge,
Reginald A. Fessenden,
C. Francis Jenkins,
Count Georg von Arco,
E. F. W. Alexanderson,
Frank Conrad,
Heinrich Hertz,
James
Clerk Maxwell
Men Who Have Made Radio: James Clerk Maxwell
 The Eighth of a Series
"If you seek his monument, look about you," is written on the tomb of the architect
of St. Paul's. The whole of earthly space, vibrant with the countless messages that
are incessantly hurrying to and fro with the speed of light, has become a memorial
to the scientist who first directed the attention of mankind to the unknown and
unsuspected possibility of radio.
If Columbus, before he set sail from Palos harbor for the New World, had drawn
a map of America - islands, coasts, rivers and mountains - which his voyage proved
true in every detail, such a feat would have resembled that of Clerk Maxwell. The
latter conceived, and laboriously computed, the existence and the laws governing
an infinite range of electromagnetic "waves" imperceptible to our senses, except
for the narrow spectrum of light. He thus declared the certainty that there must
be what we today call "radio waves." Eight years were to pass after Maxwell's death
before the genius of Hertz actually demonstrated the truth of Maxwell's calculations,
and the world found awaiting it a new activity.
Today, fifty-seven years after their promulgation, the laws of Maxwell are still
the fundamental basis of the science of radio. It is not easy to describe his work
in popular language. "The object of these experiments," said the modest Hertz, announcing
their striking results, "was to test the fundamental hypotheses of the Faraday-Maxwell
theory, and the result of the experiments is to confirm them. I know no shorter
or more definite answer to the question, 'What is Maxwell's theory?' than the following:
'Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations.' "
James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1831. Though
his eccentricities of expression as a boy were to win the nickname of "Dafty" from
his schoolmates, he was yet a lad when his mathematical abilities attracted the
attention of his elders. At fifteen, he devised a method of drawing certain "curves
which was deemed worthy of publication by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. At sixteen,
he was introduced to Nicol (the inventor of the Nicol prism) and led to make a study
of light, and particularly its polarization, which was to shape his future scientific
course. In 1850 he entered the University of Cambridge, noted for the long line
of great mathematicians it has produced. Here he graduated; and here his post-graduate
work was to be most important. In 1855 appeared his paper on "Faraday's Lines of
Force," containing an analysis of the actions which take place in electrical and
magnetic fields.
Maxwell became professor of natural philosophy - or, as we now say, physics -
at Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1856; and after four years accepted a similar chair at
King's College, London. During this time he issued a classic paper which proved
that the rings of Saturn must be composed of separate solid particles. He published
in 1860 a treatise on the "Kinetic Theory of Gases"; and in 1864 the "Dynamical
Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," advancing the proposition that light is but
a manifestation of magnetism.
In 1865 ill health caused Maxwell to retire to the family estate at Glenlair,
in southwestern Scotland, where he remained until called in 1871 to Cambridge to
organize the Cavendish laboratory, as the first professor of experimental physics.
Here, among his other labors, he edited the notebooks of Cavendish, the eccentric
chemist and physicist of the eighteenth century, who had anticipated many of the
later discoveries of science, but indifferently neglected to publish them to the
world. Here, too, Maxwell published "The Theory of Heat," a book for the beginner,
and his great work on "Electricity and Magnetism." In this he not only united the
scientific theories of light and electricity, but showed the necessity of the existence
of waves both longer and shorter than those of light, in unending ranges; and thus
laid upon the world of science the task of finding them.
Maxwell's own time was short. His work was interrupted by illness; and, at the
early age of forty-eight, he died at his Scotch home, on November 5, 1879. Yet,
brief as was his life, it had revolutionized the outlook of science upon the world;
and, though his own labors were in the field of mathematics and pure science, they
have led directly to the development of radio and many other applications of electricity.
He is the creator of modern mathematical physics; in the words of Sir Joseph Larmor,
"Maxwell unified physical science, by connecting light and radiation with electricity
so as to form one interlocked, systematic whole."
The comparison which has been made most often, perhaps, is that of Maxwell and
Newton. Newton advanced mankind's conception of the unity of the universe by bringing
the whole of it under the scope of one physical law; Maxwell brought all the fundamental
phenomena into a single law - except that the task of fitting gravitation into the
electromagnetic scheme was not to be accomplished by him. Whatever modifications
the science of the future may find necessary in the system of Maxwell, and whatever
additions it may make to his calculations, he has, like Newton, the glory of bringing
about a new era in human thought; and by those who live in the Day of Radio, he
must be remembered as its Morning Star.
Posted July
(updated from original post on 8/31/2015)
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