Wednesday 22 February 2012

Hertz

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz has been honoured with a Google doodle marking the 155th anniversary of his birth.

"The German physicist whose experiments with electromagnetic waves led to the development of the wireless telegraph and the radio" and later television.

Hertz could be a subject for a Celebrity Historical - a child prodigy, a PhD by twenty-two, a lecturer by twenty-five, a professor by twenty-seven, and he only lived to thirty-six. He was certainly a candidate for Insatiable Curiosity, mastering Arabic and Sanskrit and taking an interest in meteorology as well as his defining pursuit.

And there have to be monsters in the Whoniverse who would want to stop humanity discovering electromagnetic waves.

The Cybermen certainly didn't like EMPs. And there are invaders who would want to stop us developing instant communication, creatures who hide themselves with technology, even things directly affected by it, like the Wire, a living television signal.

A genius like Hertz could be just the friend a time traveller needs.

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