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.

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.

Hughes was born in 1830, the son of a musically talented family hailing originally from Y Bala (the place of birth was either London or Corwen, Denbighshire), and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven.

[6] In less than two years a number of small telegraph companies, including Western Union in early stages of development, united to form one large corporation — Western Union Telegraph Company — to carry on the business of telegraphy on the Hughes system.

His paper was read before the Royal Society of London by Thomas Henry Huxley on May 8, 1878, and his new "microphone" was covered in the July 1 edition of Telegraph Journal and Electrical Review.

By trial and error experiments he eventually found he could pick up these "aerial waves" as he carried his telephone device down the street out to a range of 500 yards (460 m).

[6][13] A connection with Hughes phenomenon and radio waves seems to show up 4 years after Heinrich Hertz's 1888 proof of their existence when Sir William Crookes mentioned in his 1892 Fortnightly Review article on Some Possibilities of Electricity that he had already participated in "wireless telegraphy" by an "identical means" to Hertz, a statement showing Crookes was probably another attendee at Hughes' demonstration.

[15] Hughes did not publish his findings but did finally mention them in an 1899 letter to The Electrician magazine[2][11][16][17][18] where he commented that Hertz's experiments were "far more conclusive than mine", and that Marconi's "efforts at demonstration merit the success he has received...[and] the world will be right in placing his name on the highest pinnacle, in relation to aerial electric telegraphy".