Oliver Lodge

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz's proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures ("The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors"), Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the "coherer". In 1898 he was awarded the "syntonic" (or tuning) patent by the United States Patent Office. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920.

Oliver Lodge was born in 1851 at 'The Views', Penkhull, then a rural village high above the emerging Potteries of North Staffordshire in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, and educated at Adams' Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire. His parents were Oliver Lodge (1826–1884) – later a ball clay merchant at Wolstanton, Staffordshire – and his wife, Grace, née Heath (1826–1879). Lodge was their first child, and altogether they had eight sons and a daughter. Lodge's siblings included Sir Richard Lodge (1855–1936), historian; Eleanor Constance Lodge (1869–1936), historian and principal of Westfield College, London; and Alfred Lodge (1854–1937), mathematician.

When Lodge was 12, the family moved house a short distance north along the valley ridge, to Wolstanton. There, at Moreton House on the southern tip of Wolstanton Marsh, he took over a large outbuilding for his first scientific experiments during the long school holidays.

In 1865, Lodge, at the age of 14, left his schooling and entered his father's business (Oliver Lodge & Son) as an agent for B. Fayle & Co selling Purbeck blue clay to the pottery manufacturers. This work sometimes entailed him travelling as far as Scotland. He continued to assist his father until he reached the age of 22.

His father's growing wealth from trade enabled him to move the family to Chatterley House, Hanley, when Lodge was 18. From there Lodge attended physics lectures in London, and also attended the Wedgwood Institute in nearby Burslem. At Chatterley House, just a mile south of Etruria Hall where Wedgwood had experimented, Lodge's Autobiography recalled that "something like real experimentation" began for him around 1869.

Growing increasingly affluent in a booming industrial economy, the family moved again in 1875 – this time to the nearby Watlands Hall at the top of Porthill Bank between Middleport and Wolstanton (demolished 1951). Lodge obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1875 and gained the title of Doctor of Science in 1877. At Wolstanton he experimented with producing a wholly new "electromagnetic light" in 1879 and 1880, paving the way for later experimental success. During this time, he also lectured at Bedford College, London.