Today is Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's 155th birthday. Google is honoring him with a doodle, which has prompted the mainstream press to recount Hertz's work. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, notes that his work “is crucial to television, radio, and Wi-Fi. The Washington Post, under the headline “HEINRICH HERTZ GOOGLE DOODLE: 'Wavy Doodle' proves a magnetic tribute to German physicist,” includes an animation of the doodle, which you can take a look at if you see this post after the Google home page moves on to something else.
The Monitor provides a nice, accessible history that extends back beyond Hertz: “Our story starts in 1873, when a Scottish physicist named James Maxwell tried to convince people that light, electricity, and magnetism were all versions of the same phenomenon. It was a weird idea at the time. How could the invisible power of magnets go hand-in-hand with the radiant glow of candlelight?” Maxwell “challenged other scientists to come up with experiments that could demonstrate this invisible science to the naked eye. A decade later, Hertz found a way, building a transmitter and receiver from brass spheres and curved wire.
It's nice to see scientists get some attention, so thanks to Google for that. Of course, Google is not a company to miss a marketing opportunity, and the Google doodle is actually modulated to reflect the Google logo. My only complaint is that the doodle doesn't appear to me to be sinusoidal but rather constructed from semicircles and semi ovals. I guess I'm being too literal.
