Did radio’s first inventor inadvertently become the first documented victim of RF‑induced auto‑immunity? This timeline argues yes—and shows how every leap in broadcast power has been shadowed by the sudden appearance of Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (GPA).
👉 Goal of this post: Rally historians, clinicians, and archivists to hunt the missing charts that can confirm—or refute—Hertz as “Patient Zero” and trace the real-world toll of runaway ether pollution.
Hertz—the prototype casualty 🧑🔬💥
- 1886‑1889 A vibrant, healthy 29‑year‑old Heinrich Hertz conducts daily kilovolt spark‑gap experiments. Letters home describe “unceasing forehead pressure” and brutal sinus pain after his breakthrough RFR experiments.
- 1894 He dies at 36 from a necrotising vasculitis no doctor had ever named—symptoms now unmistakably resemble GPA.
▶︎ Latency: ~7 yrs of heavy RF exposure ➜ fatal autoimmune collapse.
Germany cranks the wattage 🇩🇪🔌
- 1913 Nauen LF station jumps to 100 kW, becoming Earth’s loudest transmitter.
- 21 Nov 1930 Mühlacker MW mast lights up with 60 kW (boosted to 100 kW in ’34).
- 1936 Pathologist Friedrich Wegener (Breslau) presents the first GPA case‑series.
▶︎ Latency: 6 yrs after Mühlacker’s switch‑on, GPA gets its name.
Across the Atlantic—America’s RF crescendo 🗽🚀
Long Island VLF giants 🌲➡️🏙️
1921 RCA Radio Central starts two 200 kW Alexanderson alternators—continuous VLF saturates the NYC‑LI corridor.
Skyscraper megawatts 🏢📺
1950 Empire State Building debuts its VHF master array: WNYC‑TV alone blasts ≈ 1 MW ERP; dozens of AM/FM sticks ring the boroughs.
Clinics connect the dots 🏥📄
1954 Drs Churg & Godman (Columbia‑Presbyterian) publish America’s first 22‑patient GPA series—half local New Yorkers, half referrals along the same Northeast RF spine.
▶︎ Latency: 4‑5 yrs after the VHF power‑step ➜ GPA bursts into U.S. literature.
The latency rhyme ⏳🎯
- Spark bench (1887‑94) Milli‑watt radiation, kilovolt fields ➜ 1 scientist, 1 fatal case.
- Regional towers (1930‑36) 60‑100 kW MW ➜ GPA coined within a decade.
- Metro megawatts (1950‑54) Multi‑MW mixed band ➜ first U.S. cluster in ≤ 5 yrs.
🔎 Pattern: The larger the lobe × the denser the head‑count, the quicker GPA surfaces.
Mechanistic breadcrumbs 🧬🧩
⚡ ROS surge — sub‑thermal RF elevates reactive‑oxygen species, seeding chronic ENT inflammation.
⚡ Calcium mis‑gating — nanosecond E‑fields pry open voltage‑gated Ca²⁺ channels, priming vasculitic cascades.
⚡ Immune mis‑tagging — persistent electromagnetic noise fosters neo‑antigens; ANCAs attack neutrophil proteinase 3.
All three occur at exposure levels below current “thermal” safety limits.
Missing pieces—your help needed 🕵️♂️🗂️
1️⃣ Chesapeake naval autopsies (1900‑1940) — charts may hide “necrotising sinusitis” mis‑labels; digitisation urgent.
2️⃣ Berlin/Breslau municipal death logs (1910‑1940) — cross‑match RF‑worker addresses with early GPA‑like deaths.
3️⃣ NYC RF dose‑map vs. Columbia charts (1945‑1960) — overlay street‑level field reconstructions with patient addresses.
Call to archivists & med‑historians: These records exist. Let’s scan, code, and run the geo‑temporal analytics.
Policy levers 📜⚠️
📌 Re‑activate Public Law 90‑602 — mandate continuous, non‑thermal RF health surveillance.
📌 Li‑Fi first indoors — reserve RF for space‑to‑ground or narrow‑beam links.
📌 ALARA for the ether — regulate power density like chemical load; cut urban lobes now.
“Every artificial oscillation is an ecological pollutant until proven otherwise.”
Hertz never penned that corollary—his discovery killed him first. Let’s not ignore the same warning sign in our cities.
Why this matters for our kids 👧👦💔
Breakthroughs should lengthen human life; instead we’re seeing rising autoimmune and neuro‑developmental disorders. If our EM habitat is silently eroding the software of life, failing to act condemns future generations to shorter, sicker journeys.
We learned to scrub coal smoke. It’s time to scrub the ether.
Share. Cite. Demand the records.
A century‑long breadcrumb trail is waiting—let’s finish it and discover whether Hertz’s headache was the canary that could have saved us all.
