TABLE OF CONTENTS Rays of light will not pierce through a wall, nor, as we know only too well, through a London fog. But the electrical vibrations of a yard or more in wave-length of which I have spoken will easily pierce such mediums, which to them will be transparent. Here then, is revealed the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without wires, posts, cables, or any of our present costly appliances. Granted a few reasonable postulates, the whole thing comes well within the realms of possible fulfillment.
William Crookes, 1892
The magic and mystery of radio have captured imaginations from the earliest speculations of William Crookes to the present day. The marvel of radio is taken for granted in a world of pervasive and instantaneous wireless communication. All around us quiver vibrations in the aether conveying data: voices, images, and information. The magic of radio plucks these vibrations out of thin air and recovers the original data. The wand responsible for this wizardry is the antenna.
Of course, neither radios nor antennas are really magic. As Arthur C. Clarke observed, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" [1]. Radio is merely the technical application of electromagnetic science to communications. The extent to which radio appears magical is the extent to which one has failed to understand the advanced technology that makes radio work (or merely takes it all for granted). By any measure, antennas are among the most mysterious and least understood aspects of radio technology "magic" by Clarke's definition. And if...
