A theoretical treatment is presented of the behavior of various components of the electromagnetic field generated by a horizontal electric dipole, embedded in a homogeneous conducting half‐space, and excited by a step‐function current. Displacement currents are neglected, thereby limiting the validity of the treatment to frequencies that are not too high, while the results for the transient response are only valid for sufficiently large times after the application of the step function to the dipole. The treatment is based on Laplace transform theory. Besides the electric and magnetic components in the conducting medium, also the vertical electric field in aire0zat points at the interface is examined. Since the expressions obtained are rather involved, numerical results are given only fore0zand a horizontal magnetic component in the conducting mediumh1x. The response ofe0zis a pulse with a rise time proportional to the square of the antenna depth but independent of horizontal distance, and a long trailing edge. The magnetic componenth1xrises slowly to a stationary value; its rise time increases with increasing horizontal distance. It is shown that there is a marked difference in attenuation with depth, and sometimes also with horizontal distance, between transient and sinusoidal signals.