Beschreibung:

HERTZ, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894). "ber sehr schnelle electrische Schwingungen"; "Nachtrag zu der Abhandlung ber sehr schnelle electrische Schwingungen"; "ber einen Einfluss des ultravioletten Lichtes auf die electrische Entladung". In Annalen der Physik und Chemie (Neue Folge 31), 1887, pp. 421-448; 543-544; 983-1000. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1887. 8 o (211 x 132 mm). 7 folding lithographic plates for the volume. (Fol. 66/4 [pp. 1047-1048] detached.) Original cloth (spine torn and faded, upper cover dampstained, upper inner hinge repaired.) FIRST EDITION of Hertz's first paper on electromagnetic waves, with the second journal publication of his second paper. "When Hertz entered physics in the 1870's, electrodynamics was in a disorganized state. Theories had multiplied in its fifty years of development, and each had its own following... To encourage... the experimental decision between electrodynamic theories Helmholtz proposed through the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1879 a second prize problem, this one in connection with the behavior of unclosed circuits in Maxwell's theory... Although at the time Hertz declined to try the Berlin Academy problem... he kept the problem constantly in mind; and in 1886 shortly after arriving in Karlsruhe he found that the Riess or Knochenhauer induction coils he was using in lecture demonstrations were precisely the means he needed for undertaking Helmholtz' test of Maxwell's theory... By the end of 1888 he had gone beyond the terms of Helmholtz' problem and had confirmed the existence of electromagnetic waves in air... He published a total of nine papers from his electrical researches in Karlsruhe. They drew immediate, widespread recognition..." (DSB). In his first paper Hertz described the apparatus that he had devised for the detection and measurement of electromagnetic waves, the key to his later successes. To prove that electrical waves can be projected though space it was necessary to devise a means of both producing the waves and, more difficult at the time, of detecting them once produced. For this Hertz used "an effect as old as the discovery of electricity itself--the electric spark. By inducing the waves to produce an electric spark at a distance, with no apparent connexion between the oscillator and the spark gap, and by moving the sparking apparatus so that the length of the spark varied, he proved beyond question the passage of electric waves through space" (PMM 377). "Hertz's proof was the result of his experimental inventiveness... He regarded his detection device as his most original stroke, since no amount of theory would have predicted that it would work" (DSB). In his paper on ultraviolet light Hertz showed that UV light is alone responsible for the photoelectric effect, an effect which he foresaw as having "profound theoretical meaning for the connection of light and electricity" (op.cit.). The volume also includes papers by Max Planck, W. C. Rntgen, R. Bunsen, and others. Dibner Heralds of Science 71; Norman 1060.