Basically, consumer electronics and the entire telecommunications industry can not exist until this piece of fundamental physics, call the Photoelectric Effect , is discovered and understood.

We start out with the historical evolution of this discovery.

Hertz Finds Maxwell's Waves: and Something Else

The most dramatic prediction of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, published in 1865, was the existence of electromagnetic waves moving at the speed of light, and the conclusion that light itself was just such a wave. This challenged experimentalists to generate and detect electromagnetic radiation using some form of electrical apparatus. The first clearly successful attempt was by Heinrich Hertz in 1886. He used a high voltage induction coil to cause a spark discharge between two pieces of brass, to quote him, "Imagine a cylindrical brass body, 3 cm in diameter and 26 cm long, interrupted midway along its length by a spark gap whose poles on either side are formed by spheres of 2 cm radius." The idea was that once a spark formed a conducting path between the two brass conductors, charge would rapidly oscillate back and forth, emitting electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength similar to the size of the conductors themselves.

To prove there really was radiation emitted, it had to be detected. Hertz used a piece of copper wire 1 mm thick bent into a circle of diameter 7.5 cms, with a small brass sphere on one end, and the other end of the wire was pointed, with the point near the sphere. He added a screw mechanism so that the point could be moved very close to the sphere in a controlled fashion. This "receiver" was designed so that current oscillating back and forth in the wire would have a natural period close to that of the "transmitter" described above. The presence of oscillating charge in the receiver would be signaled by a spark across the (tiny) gap between the point and the sphere (typically, this gap was hundredths of a millimeter). (It was suggested to Hertz that this spark gap could be replaced as a detector by a suitably prepared frog's leg, but that apparently didn't work.)

The experiment was very successful - Hertz was able to detect the radiation up to fifty feet away, and in a series of ingenious experiments established that the radiation was reflected and refracted as expected, and that it was polarized. The main problem - the limiting factor in detection -- was being able to see the tiny spark in the receiver. In trying to improve the spark's visibility, he came upon something very mysterious. To quote from Hertz again (he called the transmitter spark A, the receiver B):

"I occasionally enclosed the spark B in a dark case so as to more easily make the observations; and in so doing I observed that the maximum spark-length became decidedly smaller in the case than it was before. On removing in succession the various parts of the case, it was seen that the only portion of it which exercised this prejudicial effect was that which screened the spark B from the spark A. The partition on that side exhibited this effect, not only when it was in the immediate neighbourhood of the spark B, but also when it was interposed at greater distances from B between A and B. A phenomenon so remarkable called for closer investigation."

Hertz then embarked on a very thorough investigation. He found that the small receiver spark was more vigorous if it was exposed to ultraviolet light from the transmitter spark. It took a long time to figure this out - he first checked for some kind of electromagnetic effect, but found a sheet of glass effectively shielded the spark. He then found a slab of quartz did not shield the spark, whereupon he used a quartz prism to break up the light from the big spark into its components, and discovered that the wavelength which made the little spark more powerful was beyond the visible, in the ultraviolet.

In 1887, Hertz concluded what must have been months of investigation: " I confine myself at present to communicating the results obtained, without attempting any theory respecting the manner in which the observed phenomena are brought about."

Hallwachs' Simpler Approach

The next year, 1888, another German physicist, Wilhelm Hallwachs, in Dresden, wrote:

"In a recent publication Hertz has described investigations on the dependence of the maximum length of an induction spark on the radiation received by it from another induction spark. He proved that the phenomenon observed is an action of the ultraviolet light. No further light on the nature of the phenomenon could be obtained, because of the complicated conditions of the research in which it appeared. I have endeavored to obtain related phenomena which would occur under simpler conditions, in order to make the explanation of the phenomena easier. Success was obtained by investigating the action of the electric light on electrically charged bodies."

He then describes his very simple experiment: a clean circular plate of zinc was mounted on an insulating stand and attached by a wire to a gold leaf electroscope, which was then charged negatively. The electroscope lost its charge very slowly. However, if the zinc plate was exposed to ultraviolet light from an arc lamp, or from burning magnesium, charge leaked away quickly. If the plate was positively charged, there was no fast charge leakage.

Questions for the reader: Could it be that the ultraviolet light somehow spoiled the insulating properties of the stand the zinc plate was on? Could it be that electric or magnetic effects from the large current in the arc lamp somehow caused the charge leakage?

Although Hallwach's experiment certainly clarified the situation, he did not offer any theory of what was going on.

J.J. Thomson Identifies the Particles

In fact, the situation remained unclear until 1899, when Thomson established that the ultraviolet light caused electrons to be emitted, the same particles found in cathode rays. His method was to enclose the metallic surface to be exposed to radiation in a vacuum tube, in other words to make it the cathode in a cathode ray tube. The new feature was that electrons were to be ejected from the cathode by the radiation, rather than by the strong electric field used previously.

By this time, there was a plausible picture of what was going on. Atoms in the cathode contained electrons, which were shaken and caused to vibrate by the oscillating electric field of the incident radiation. Eventually some of them would be shaken loose, and would be ejected from the cathode. It is worthwhile considering carefully how the number and speed of electrons emitted would be expected to vary with the intensity and color of the incident radiation. Increasing the intensity of radiation would shake the electrons more violently, so one would expect more to be emitted, and they would shoot out at greater speed, on average. Increasing the frequency of the radiation would shake the electrons faster, so might cause the electrons to come out faster. For very dim light, it would take some time for an electron to work up to a sufficient amplitude of vibration to shake loose.