Thermal Agitation of Electricity in Conductors

JOHNSON, J. B.

doi:10.1038/119050c0

Letter
Published: 08 January 1927

Thermal Agitation of Electricity in Conductors

J. B. JOHNSON¹

Nature volume 119, pages 50–51 (1927)Cite this article

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ORDINARY electric conductors are sources of spontaneous fluctuations of voltage which can be measured with sufficiently sensitive instruments. This property of conductors appears to be the result of thermal agitation of the electric charges in the material of the conductor.

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Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., New York, N.Y., Nov. 17. https://www.nature.com/nature
J. B. JOHNSON

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J. B. JOHNSON
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JOHNSON, J. Thermal Agitation of Electricity in Conductors. Nature 119, 50–51 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119050c0

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Issue Date: 08 January 1927
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119050c0

Editorial Summary

Johnson and 1/f noise

While trying to perfect the design and manufacture of the vacuum valve, the pioneers of electronic engineering uncovered a fundamental problem — noise. Walter Schottky first postulated the existence of thermal noise and shot noise in 1918. In a letter to Nature in 1927, J. B. Johnson commented on voltage fluctuations that appear "to be the result of thermal agitation of the electric charges in the material of the conductor". Johnson would later become associated with thermal noise — now also known as Johnson noise — after he published a definitive experiment on noise in 1928, alongside Harry Nyquist's theoretical explanation [Johnson, J. B. Phys. Rev. 32, 97–109 (1928); Nyquist, H. Phys. Rev. 32, 110–113 (1928)]. But his letter of 1927 was intended to bring "a similar phenomenon" to the attention of Nature readers. In this case the fluctuations depend not on temperature but inversely on frequency — Johnson had discovered '1/f noise'.

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