Illustration: Edward Hughes listens to radio waves
The story of radio began when, as long as 1964, a Cambridge University professor, James Clerk Maxwell, completed an amazing work of pure mathematics that dealt with something with which he had never worked - the stresses and strains in space we now know as 'radio waves'.
Maxwell foretold many of the laws which govern these waves. He said they travelled at 186,00 miles (300,000,000 metres) a second, and that ion the same manner as light waves they could be bent, absorbed, reflected and focused. He added that although light waves illuminate an object, radio waves would not do this, but would change the nature of the object on which they were focused.
Scientists everywhere coldly received Maxwell's prophecies, and even the great Lord Kelvin did not believe that he was right. Unfortunately Maxwell died before his theories were proved to be correct.
In the year 1979, a man called Edward Hughes, using a receiver he himself had made, listened in the heart of London to those very radio waves Maxwell had told about, but like Maxwell, Hughes was nor believed. Even the great scientific authority, the Royal Society, did not believe him.
Material taken from: A Ladybird 'Achievements' Book, Publishers: Wills & Hepworth Ltd, Loughborough, First published 1968. Printed in England.
