The invention of radio communication was preceded by many decades of establishing theoretical underpinnings, discovery and experimental investigation of radio waves, and engineering and technical developments related to their transmission and detection. These developments allowed Guglielmo Marconi to turn radio waves into a wireless communication system. The idea that the wires needed for electrical telegraph could be eliminated, creating a wireless telegraph, had been around for a while before the establishment of radio-based communication. Inventors attempted to build systems based on electric conduction, electromagnetic induction, or on other theoretical ideas. Several inventors/experimenters came across the phenomenon of radio waves before its existence was proven; it was written off as electromagnetic induction at the time. The discovery of electromagnetic waves, including radio waves, by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz in the 1880s came after theoretical development on the connection between electricity and magnetism that started in the early 1800s. This work culminated in a theory of electromagnetic radiation developed by James Clerk Maxwell by 1873, which Hertz demonstrated experimentally. Hertz considered electromagnetic waves to be of little practical value. Other experimenters, such as Oliver Lodge and Jagadish Chandra Bose, explored the physical properties of electromagnetic waves, and they developed electric devices and methods to improve the transmission and detection of electromagnetic waves. But they did not apparently see the value in developing a communication system based on electromagnetic waves. In the mid 1890s, building on techniques physicists were using to study electromagnetic waves, Guglielmo Marconi developed the first apparatus for long-distance radio communication. On 23 December 1900, the Canadian inventor Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to send audio (wireless telephony) by means of electromagnetic waves, successfully transmitting over a distance of about a mile (1.6 kilometers,) and six years later on Christmas Eve 1906 he became the first person to make a public wireless broadcast. By 1910, these various wireless systems had come to be called "radio". Wireless communication theories and methods previous to radio Before the discovery of electromagnetic waves and the development of radio communication, there were many wireless telegraph systems proposed and tested. In April 1872 William Henry Ward received for a wireless telegraphy system where he theorized that convection currents in the atmosphere could carry signals like a telegraph wire. A few months after Ward received his patent, Mahlon Loomis of West Virginia received for a similar "wireless telegraph" in July 1872. The patented system claimed to