David Edward Hughes

David Edward Hughes
David Edward Hughes
Born(1830-05-16)16 May 1830
London[1] or Corwen, Denbighshire[2]
Died22 January 1900(1900-01-22) (aged 68)
London[1]
NationalityBritish-American
Known forTeleprinter, Microphone, Early radio wave detection

David Edward Hughes (16 May 1830 – 22 January 1900), was a British-American inventor, practical experimenter, and professor of music known for his work on the printing telegraph and the microphone.[3] He is generally considered to have been born in London but his family moved around that time so he may have been born in Corwen, Wales.[4]

His family moved to the U.S. while he was a child and he became a professor of music in Kentucky. In 1855 he patented a printing telegraph. He moved back to London in 1857 and further pursued experimentation and invention, coming up with an improved carbon microphone in 1878.

In 1879 he identified what seemed to be a new phenomenon during his experiments: sparking in one device could be heard in a separate portable microphone apparatus he had set up. It was most probably radio transmissions but this was nine years before electromagnetic radiation was a proven concept and Hughes was convinced by others that his discovery was simply electromagnetic induction.

  1. ^ a b "David Hughes". Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference heroes was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "David Hughes". Encyclopædia Britannica online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2014. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
  4. ^ Stephens, S. D. G. (1979). "David Edward Hughes and his audiometer". The Journal of Laryngology & Otology. 93 (1): 1–6. doi:10.1017/S0022215100086667. PMID 372469. S2CID 1154906.