Heinrich Rudolph Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany on February 22, 1857. His work in research was based on James Maxwell's prophecy that an electric oscillation should produce electromagnetic waves that would travel at the speed of light. Hertz grew up in a Germany of Bismarck that promoted science and technology as national goals. He was a gifted student and studied math, science, and engineering. His choice, however, was for fundamental research, but he practiced both "book" (theory) and "bench" (experiment) first in Munich and then in Berlin's Physical Institute where he became a student of Herman von Helmholtz. Helmholtz was interested in Maxwell's theory on electromagnetic waves, and in 1879 he proposed a prize to anyone who could demonstrate the theory. Maxwell's theory included the proposition that light is part of the family of electromagnetic waves. Maxwell, building on Faraday's experiments, theorized that any disturbance causing a changing electric field, must produce a changing magnetic field which in turn must produce a changing magnetic field, etc., and the waves thereby advance at the speed of light.

Hertz was not ready to enter Helmholtz's contest, but moved instead to Karlsruhe where he met, courted, then married Elizabeth Doll, a daughter of a professor at the school. His research was to find a detector that could detect a period of oscillation of a fraction of a millionth of a second, and the solution was a circle or rectangle of wire interrupted in the middle by a small adjustable spark gap. Electric sparks crossing the gap would become visible even when the potential causing them arose for only a millionth of a second. In his book, Electric Waves (1893), Hertz documented his experiments which formed the basis of radio, the induction spark coil to generate the electric wave, and the spark gap to detect waves across space.

Hertz adjusted both capacitance and inductance of the transmitting oscillation so as to match the detector, introducing a well-known phenomenon "resonance." The mechanical equivalent is to vibrate tuning forks in sympathy so that they have the same frequency. Hertz was now ready to the challenge of Helmholtz to demonstrate Maxwell's electromagnetic waves.