was Bell saying 'Mr Watson, come here I want you.' Bell had spilt some acid from a battery over himself and he wanted his assistant Watson to help. In this way the first telephone message was an emergency call! These were many of the essential foundations that were required before discoveries in radio could begin. Here the first major stone was set in place by a brilliant mathematician and researcher named Maxwell. Born in 1831 he entered Edinburgh University when he was only 16. After graduating, he spent time at a number of universities, but it was when he was at King's College in London that he undertook most of the work into electromagnetic theory for which he is famous. He published three main papers between 1855 and 1864, and finally summarized his work in a book entitled Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. His work proved the existence of an electromagnetic wave. However, much of Maxwell's work was theoretical and he was never able to demonstrate the presence of electromagnetic waves in practice. Sadly, Maxwell died at the early age of 48, and the work he started was left to others to continue. The quest for the electromagnetic wave took many years. A number of people including Edison and Henry came close to discovering it. However, it was a German named Heinrich Hertz to whom the honour fell. Hertz performed a wide variety of experiments to prove the existence of these new waves. He also gave a number of demonstrations and lectures. In one of these he used an induction coil connected to a loop of wire in which two large spheres were placed slightly apart. The induction coil generated a large voltage in the circuit causing a spark to jump across the gap. In turn this caused a spark to jump across the gap of a similar coil with two spheres placed within a few metres of the transmitter. Using other equipment Hertz managed to prove many of the basic properties of these waves. He showed that they had the same velocity as light, and they were refracted and reflected in the same way. As Hertz had discovered t