Milestones of Discovery:
The Most Important Publications in the History of Radio and Electricity

 

Science by its nature is a collaborative enterprise where new pioneers build on the discoveries of those who came before them.  The "brilliant flashes of inspiration" are highly celebrated, but they are also quite rare. Most developments are evolutionary; When discontinuous results occur they are more often the result of accident than the creation of a truly new idea. That said, there are certainly brilliant strokes of insight throughout the pages of electrical and radio history. Franklin's "single-fluid" positive/negative concept of electricity, or Maxwell's mathematical prediction of electromagnetic waves are but two examples.

Despite the thousands of contributions, discoveries, developments and improvements,  there is a handful that can be singled out as the most significant - The major  milestones of thinking or discovery.

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought."
--Albert Szent-Gyorgi (in The Scientist Speculates ed. by Good)

Below are the publications from my collection that I believe represent the major contributions toward the development of electricity and radio.  Click the book title for additional information including images from the book

(A complete list of all of my books and periodicals is available by clicking here)

A Literary Timeline of Radio and Electricity

1560
The Distinction between Static Electricity and Magnetism
Girolamo Cardano
(1501 - 1576)

1600
The First Book of Electricity and Magnetism

William Gilbert
(1544 - 1603)

1629
Magnetic Attraction and Repulsion

Nicolo Cabeo
(1585-1650)

1641
Electro-Magnetism

Athanasius Kircher
(1602-1680)

1672
Invention of the Vacuum Pump and the First Electrical Machine
 Otto von Guericke
(1602 - 1686)
1680
The Foundation of Chemistry
Robert Boyle
(1627 - 1691)
1709
First Glass-Globe Electrical Machine

Francis Hauksbee
(1666-1713)
1729
Conduction and Insulation

Stephen Gray
(1666-1736)
1734
Two kinds of Electricity

C.F. Dufay
(1698 - 1739)
1745
The Magazine that Sparked Benjamin Franklin's
Interest in Electricity
Sylvanus Urban
1746
The Electric "Circuit"


William Watson
(1715 - 1787)
1746
The Leyden Jar
Pieter Van Musschenbroek
(1692 - 1761)
1751
The Lightning Rod, Positive and Negative Electricity

Benjamin Franklin
(1706 - 1790)
1753
A Foil for Franklin and the Promoter of the Leyden Jar

l'Abbe Nollet
(1700 - 1770)
1769
The First Book of Electrical History

Joseph Priestley
(1733 - 1804)
1784
The Inverse Square Law

Charles Coulomb
(1736 - 1806)
1791
The Discovery of Current Electricity

Luigi Galvani
(1737 - 1798)
1800
The Invention of the Battery

Allessandro Volta
(1745 - 1827)
1820
Electric Current produces Magnetic Field

Hans Oersted
(1777-1851)
1820
The New Science of Electrodynamics

André-Marie Ampère
(1775 - 1836)
1825
Discovery of the Electromagnet

William Sturgeon
(1783 - 1850)
1826
The Foundations of Induction

Joseph Henry
(1797 - 1878)
1827
Ohm's Law

Georg Simon Ohm
(1789-1854)
1839
The Great Experimenter
Michael Faraday
(1791 - 1867)
1841
The Father of Thermodynamics

James Prescott Joule
(1818 - 1889)
1873
The Mathematical Prediction of Radio Waves

James Clerk Maxwell
(1831-1879)
1888
The Discovery of Radio Waves

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
(1857-1894)
1890
The first Radio Detector

Edouard Branly
(1844 - 1940)
1890
The Invention of the Vacuum Tube
John Ambrose Fleming
(1849 - 1945)
1897
The First Wireless Patent in the USA

Guglielmo Marconi
(1874 - 1937)
1900
Marconi's 7777 Wireless Patent

Guglielmo Marconi
(1874 - 1937)
       
 
 
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