Sir Oliver Lodge was an English physicist and electrical engineer who contributed to the development of the radio through his work with electromagnetic radiation (EMR). In addition to his contributions to the field of RF, he was also well known for his studies in spiritualism. This was a popular social-religious movement in the 19th century in which it was believed that a person’s consciousness lived on after death and could be contacted by the living.
Early Life
Lodge was born on June 12, 1851 in Penkhull, Staffordshire, and was the oldest of nine children born to his parents Oliver Lodge and Grace Heath Lodge. As a boy, Lodge was educated at the Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire and at the age of 14, joined his father’s ball clay merchant business, “Oliver Lodge & Son.” Here, Lodge worked alongside his father until the age of 23 (1874) selling Purbeck blue clay.
The business became successful and the Lodge family came into a decent amount of money. They then moved to Chatterley House in Hanly, which enabled Lodge to attend the Wedgwood Institute as well as physics lectures in London, for which he held particular interest. Lodge also began to experiment on his own time, notably in 1869. He graduated with B.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees from the University of London in 1875 and 1877 respectively.
Career & Contributions to RF Communications
Around 1879, Lodge became the professor of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Birmingham. Later, in 1881 he became the Chair of Physics at the University College, Liverpool, during which time most of his experiments on the propagation of electromagnetic waves began.
When James Clerk Maxwell published his paper, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Lodge became very interested in the concept and soon developed an interest in generating electromagnetic waves. He took Maxwell’s theory a step further and away from the purely theoretical by performing experiments using his ideas.
In 1890, a French Physicist, Edouard Branly introduced a device called a coherer, which showed that loose iron fillings in a glass tube coalesced under the influence of radiated electric waves. To this basic design, Lodge added a “trembler,” that shook the fillings loose between waves. When connected to a receiving circuit, the improved device detected morse code signals transmitted by radio waves and enabled them to be transcribed on paper by an inker.
The device was demonstrated for the first time in 1894 at the Royal Institute and quickly became the standard detector afterward in early wireless telegraph receivers. Lodge was eventually knighted by King Edward VII in 1902 in recognition of his significant scientific contributions to electromagnetism and wireless telegraphy. However, as technology moves onward at a brisk pace, Lodge’s device became obsolete within the following decade when Guglielmo Marconi introduced his more advanced radio transceiver.
Later Life
After Lodge’s retirement in 1920, he and his wife settled in Normanton House near Lake Wiltshire, a few miles from Stonehenge. Together, the couple had an astonishing six sons and six daughters throughout their marriage. While Lodge is best known for his contributions to electromagnetics, he also took the time in his later years to pursue his interest in spiritualism, or the ability to commune with the dead, as this technique also employed various methods of detecting radio waves.
Lodge died on August 22, 1940 in Wilsford cum Lake at the age of 89. His wife, Mary Fanny Alexander Marchall predeceased him in 1929. They are buried together at the local parish church, St. Michael’s, also in Wilsford cum Lake, Wiltshire. The couple’s eldest son Oliver and eldest daughter, Violet are also buried at the church.
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