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Guglielmo Marconi

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Engineers and inventors

          Guglielmo Marconi is generally characterized as the inventor of
          radio. For competing claims, see: History of radio, Invention of
          Radio.

   CAPTION: Guglielmo Marchese Marconi

   Guglielmo Marconi
   Guglielmo Marconi
        Born      25 April 1874
                  Palazzo Marescalchi, Bologna, Italy
        Died      20 July 1937
                  Rome, Italy
     Residence    UK , Italy
    Nationality   Italian - Irish
       Field      Electrical engineer
    Institution   Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd.
     Alma Mater   None
     Known for    Radio
   Notable Prizes Nobel Prize for Physics (1909)
      Religion    Roman Catholic
   He is not listed as attending a university, as he had no tertiary
   qualifications.

   Guglielmo Marchese Marconi, GCVO ( 25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an
   Italian inventor, best known for his development of a practical
   radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the
   establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the
   1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition
   of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".

Birth and early years

   Marconi was born near Bologna, Italy, the second son of Giuseppe
   Marconi, an Italian landowner, and his Irish wife, Annie Jameson,
   granddaughter of the founder of the Jameson Whiskey distillery. He was
   educated in Bologna, Florence and, later, in Livorno. Baptized as a
   Catholic, he was brought up Protestant by his mother and was a member
   of the Anglican church. He formally converted to Catholicism after his
   second marriage.

Radio work

   While growing up, Marconi had an intense early interest in science, and
   was especially fascinated by electricity. One of the more important
   scientific developments during this era came from Heinrich Hertz, who,
   beginning in 1888, became the first person to demonstrate devices that
   could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation—now known as "radio
   waves", but at the time more commonly called "Hertzian waves". Hertz's
   death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries, and
   a renewed interest on the part of Marconi. He was permitted to briefly
   study the subject under Augusto Righi, a University of Bologna
   physicist who had done research on Hertz's work.

   Marconi began to conduct experiments, building much of his own
   equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio,
   Italy. His goal became to find a way to use radio waves to create a
   practical system of "wireless telegraphy"—i.e. the transmission of
   telegraph messages without the need for the connecting wires used by
   the electric telegraph. (This was not a completely new idea—numerous
   investigators had been exploring various wireless telegraph
   technologies for over 50 years, but none had yet proven commercially
   successful). Marconi developed a system with the following main
   components:
     * A relatively simple spark-gap radio transmitter, which was closely
       modeled after one designed by Righi, which in turn was similar to
       what Hertz had used.
     * A telegraph key, used to operate the transmitter to send short and
       long pulses, corresponding to the dots-and-dashes of Morse code.
     * A coherer receiver, which was a modification of Edouard Branly's
       original device, with refinements that made it more sensitive and
       reliable.
     * A telegraph register, activated by the coherer, which recorded the
       transmitted Morse code dots-and-dashes onto a roll of paper tape.

   Similar configurations using spark-gap transmitters plus
   coherer-receivers had been tried by other experimenters, but they had
   been unable to achieve transmission ranges of more than a few hundred
   metres. At first, Marconi could only signal over similar limited
   distances. However, in the summer of 1895, he moved his experimentation
   outdoors. After increasing the length of the transmitter and receiver
   antennas, and arranging them vertically, he stumbled across the fact
   that when one end of each antenna was allowed to touch the ground, the
   transmission range increased significantly. (Although Marconi did not
   understand the reason at the time, these "ground connections" allowed
   the earth to act as a waveguide for the surface wave signal.) Soon he
   was able to transmit signals, over the crest of a hill, to a distance
   of approximately 1.5 kilometres (1 mile). At this point he became
   convinced that, with additional funding and research, his devices would
   become capable of spanning even greater distances, and thus would prove
   valuable both commercially and for military use.

   Finding limited interest in his work in his native Italy, in early
   1896, at the age of 21, Marconi traveled to London, England,
   accompanied by his mother. (Marconi spoke fluent English in addition to
   his native Italian.) While there, he gained the interest and support of
   William Preece, the Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post
   Office. A series of demonstrations for the British government
   followed—by March, 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals
   over a distance of about 6 kilometres (4 miles) across the Salisbury
   Plain, and on 13 May 1897, spanned the Bristol Channel from Lavernock
   Point, South Wales to Brean Down, a distance of 14 kilometres (8.7
   miles). Impressed by these and other demonstrations, Preece introduced
   Marconi's ongoing work to the general public at two important London
   lectures: "Telegraphy without Wires" at the Toynbee Hall on 11 December
   1896, and "Signalling through Space without Wires", given to the Royal
   Institute on 4 June 1897.

   Numerous additional demonstrations followed, and Marconi began to
   receive international attention. In July, 1897, he carried out a series
   of tests at La Spezia, in his home country, for the Italian government.
   A test for Lloyds between Ballycastle and Rathlin Island, Northern
   Ireland, was conducted in May, 1898. The English channel was crossed on
   27 March 1899, from Wimereux, France to South Foreland Lighthouse,
   England, and in the fall of 1899, the first demonstrations in the
   United States took place, with the reporting of the America's Cup
   international yacht races at New York.

Commercial development

   Marconi and equipment, circa 1903
   Enlarge
   Marconi and equipment, circa 1903

   On 2 June 1896 Marconi filed a Provisional Specification with the
   British Patent Office for his work, followed by a Complete
   Specification on 2 March 1897. On 2 July 1897, he was awarded British
   Patent GB12039 for Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and
   signals, and in apparatus therefor, which is sometimes recognised as
   the world's first patent in radio telecommunication. An offer by the
   British Post Office to purchase the rights to Marconi's work was
   declined, and on 20 July 1897, the London-based Wireless Telegraph and
   Signal Company, Ltd. was incorporated, with Marconi serving as a
   director and the company's Chief Engineer. (In March, 1900, the company
   was renamed Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd.)

   Eventually numerous additional companies were established worldwide,
   including the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, Inc. on 8
   November 1899 and The Marconi International Marine Communication
   Company, Ltd. on 25 April 1900, which outfitted ships internationally
   with Marconi equipment and operators. (Passengers could send and
   receive wireless telegrams called "Marconigrams".) In November, 1897,
   Marconi's first permanent transmitting station was erected at The
   Needles, Alum Bay, Isle of Wight in the south of England, and the next
   year saw the opening of the world's first "wireless telegraph" factory
   in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England, employing around 50 people. With
   the formation of the operating company, Marconi hired numerous
   important associates, and over time became less involved in the
   technical side of the concern, although he did patent a magnetic
   receiver in 1902, and in the 1920s conducted extensive research in
   shortwave transmissions, aboard his personal yacht Elettra.

   The various Marconi companies lost money for a number of years while
   they were being established—publicity about the value of radio in
   saving lives after the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, plus the
   ensuing regulations requiring radio transmitters on seagoing vessels,
   helped to make the ventures profitable. The Marconi companies quickly
   became dominant in the United Kingdom and its colonies, but faced
   significant competition from other companies, especially German-based
   Telefunken. In 1912, after absorbing the bankrupted United Wireless,
   American Marconi gained a near-monopoly position in the United States.
   However, responding to U.S. government pressure, on 20 November 1919
   the American Marconi assets were sold to the General Electric Company,
   which used them to form the Radio Corporation of America, creating a
   formidable commercial competitor.

Transatlantic transmissions

   A major advantage of radio is its ability to provide communication over
   water. Marconi quickly began to build high-powered stations on both
   sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in order to communicate with ships at sea.
   (In 1904, a commercial service was established to transmit nightly news
   summaries to subscribing ocean-going ships, which could incorporate
   them into their onboard newspapers.) At the same time, he was quietly
   investigating whether it was possible to signal completely across the
   Atlantic, in order to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables.
   Marconi watching associates raise kite antenna at St. John's, December,
   1901
   Enlarge
   Marconi watching associates raise kite antenna at St. John's, December,
   1901

   Marconi soon made the stunning announcement that on 12 December 1901,
   using a 122-metre (400-foot) kite-supported antenna for reception, he
   had personally received at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland (now
   part of Canada) signals transmitted by the company's new high-power
   station at Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was
   about 3,500 kilometres (2,100 miles). Although widely heralded as a
   great scientific advance, there was also some skepticism about this
   claim, in part because the signals had only been heard faintly and
   sporadically. In addition, there was no independent confirmation of the
   reported reception, and the transmission, which merely consisted of the
   three dots of the Morse code letter S sent repeatedly, came from a
   transmitter whose signals were difficult to differentiate from the
   noise made by atmospheric static discharges. (A detailed technical
   review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S.
   Belrose's 1995 Fessenden and Marconi: Their Differing Technologies and
   Transatlantic Experiments During the First Decade of this Century.)

   Feeling challenged by the doubters, Marconi prepared a better organized
   and documented test. In February, 1902, the S.S. Philadelphia sailed
   west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording
   signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced
   coherer-tape reception up to 2,496 kilometres (1,551 miles), and audio
   reception up to 3,378 kilometres (2,099 miles). Interestingly, the
   maximum distances were achieved at night, and thus these tests were the
   first to show that, for mediumwave and longwave transmissions, radio
   signals travel much farther at night than during the day. During the
   daytime, signals had only been received up to about 1,125 kilometres
   (700 miles), which was less than half of the distance claimed earlier
   at Newfoundland, where the transmissions had also taken place during
   the day. Because of this, Marconi had not fully confirmed the
   Newfoundland claims, although he did successfully prove that radio
   signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres, in spite of the fact
   that some scientists had believed they were essentially limited to
   line-of-sight distances.

   On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in Glace
   Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, became the first radio message to cross the
   Atlantic in an eastward direction. On 18 January 1903, a Marconi
   station built near Wellfleet, Massachusetts in 1901 sent a message of
   greetings from Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States,
   to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, marking the first
   transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.
   However, consistent transatlantic signalling turned out to be very
   difficult to establish. A regular transatlantic radiotelegraph service
   was finally announced in 1907, but even after this the company
   struggled for many years to provide reliable communication.

Titanic

   The two radio operators onboard the Titanic were not employed by the
   White Star Line but by the Marconi International Marine Communication
   Company. Following the sinking of the ocean liner, survivors were
   rescued by the Carpathia. When it docked in New York, Marconi went
   aboard with a reporter from the New York Times.
   On 18 June 1912, Marconi gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry into the
   loss of the Titanic regarding the marine telegraphy's functions and the
   procedures for emergencies at sea.

Patent disputes

   As is true for all inventions, Marconi's work built upon the
   discoveries of numerous other scientists and experimenters. (For a more
   comprehensive review of these events, see invention of radio and
   history of radio.) His original "two-circuit" equipment, consisting of
   a spark-gap transmitter plus a coherer-receiver, was similar to what
   had been utilized by many other experimenters, and in particular with
   that employed by Oliver Lodge in a series of widely reported
   demonstrations in 1894. Marconi's main claim for novelty was that
   through his work he had been able to signal for much greater distances
   than anyone else had achieved when using the spark-gap and coherer
   combination. However, there was controversy whether this was a
   sufficient enough breakthrough to deserve patent protection, or if his
   devices were too close to the original ones developed by Hertz, Branley
   and Lodge to be patentable.

   Moveover, while Marconi's initial demonstrations were groundbreaking
   for the time, his original equipment was severely limited by being
   essentially untuned, which greatly restricted the number of spark-gap
   radio transmitters which could operate simultaneously in a given
   geographical area without causing mutually disruptive interference.
   (Continuous-wave transmitters were naturally more selective, thus less
   prone to this deficiency). Marconi addressed this defect with a patent
   application for a much more sophisticated "four-circuit" design, which
   featured two tuned-circuits at both the transmitting and receiving
   antennas. This was issued as British patent number 7,777 on 26 April
   1900. However, this patent came after significant earlier work had been
   done on electrical tuning by, among others, Nikola Tesla, Lodge, Braun,
   and John Stone Stone. (As a defensive move, in 1911 the Marconi Company
   purchased the Lodge-Muirhead Syndicate, whose primary asset was Oliver
   Lodge's 1897 tuning patent.) Thus, the "four-sevens" patent and its
   equivalents in other countries was the subject of numerous legal
   challenges, with mixed rulings which varied by jurisdiction, from full
   validation of Marconi's tuning patent to complete nullification. These
   proceedings made up only a part of a long series of legal struggles, as
   major corporations jostled for advantage in a new and important
   industry.

Continuing work

   Over the years, the Marconi companies began to gain a reputation for
   being technically conservative, in particular by continuing to use
   relatively inefficient spark-transmitter technology, which could only
   be used for radiotelegraph operations, long after it was becoming
   apparent that the future of radio communication lay with
   continuous-wave transmissions, which were more efficient and could also
   be used to make audio transmissions. Somewhat belatedly, the company
   did begin to do significant work with continuous-wave equipment
   beginning in 1915, after the introduction of the oscillating
   vacuum-tube (valve). In 1920, employing a vacuum-tube transmitter, the
   Chelmsford Marconi factory was the location for the first entertainment
   radio broadcasts transmitted in the United Kingdom—one of these
   featured Dame Nellie Melba. In 1922, regular entertainment broadcasts
   commenced from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle near Chelmsford.
   When the British Broadcasting Company was formed in 1922, the Marconi
   company was a prominent participant.

Personal life, later years and death

   On 16 March 1905, Marconi married Beatrice O'Brien, daughter of Edward
   Donough O'Brien, 14th Baron Inchiquin, Ireland. They had three
   daughters (one of whom lived only a few weeks), and a son. They
   divorced in 1924 and the marriage was annulled in 1927. On 15 June
   1927, Marconi married Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali—they would have a
   single daughter.

   In 1914 Marconi was both created a Senatore in the Italian Senate, and
   appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in
   the United Kingdom. During World War I, Italy joined the Allied side of
   the conflict, and Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian
   military's radio service. In 1924, he was created a marchese by King
   Victor Emmanuel III.

   More controversially, Marconi joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923.
   In 1930, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him to be the
   President of the Accademia d'Italia, which also made Marconi a member
   of the Fascist Grand Council. In 1935, Italian forces occupied the
   African nation of Ethiopia, resulting in near universal condemnation of
   Italy. However, Marconi made numerous radio speeches supporting the
   unprovoked attack, becoming notorious enough in the process for the BBC
   to ban him from talking about the subject.

   Following his death at age 63, Italy held a state funeral commemorating
   Marconi's life. And, as a tribute, radio stations throughout the world
   observed two minutes of silence.

   In summary, he married Beatrice O'Brien (daughter of 14th Baron
   Inchiquin, m. 1905, div. 1924, b. 1882, d. 1976); Countess Maria
   Cristina Bezzi-Scali (m. 1927, b. 1900, d. 1994). His children were
   Degna (1908-1998), Gioia (1916-1996), Giulio (1910-1971), and Elettra
   (b. 1930).

   He had a brother Alfonso and a stepbrother Luigi.

   His Italian military service consisted of: the Italian Army
   (commissioned 1914 as Lt.) and the Italian Navy (Commander).

Prizes and Societies

     * Matteucci Medal 1901
     * Nobel Prize for Physics 1909 (with Ferdinand Braun)
     * IEEE Medal of Honour 1920
     * Radio Hall of Fame
     * National Inventors Hall of Fame
     * Royal Society of Arts

Other Facts

     * A section of the town of Copiague, NY was once named Marconiville,
       after Guglielmo Marconi. On Great Neck Road in there is an old gate
       standing which still reads "Marconiville".

     * Marconi is a character in the new Erik Larson novel, Thunderstruck,
       to be published October 24th, 2006.

     * Marconi Stallions, a football club in Australia is named after
       Guglielmo Marconi.

     * The Dutch radio academy yearly hands out the Marconi Awards for
       outstanding radio programmes, presenters and stations.

Patents

British Patents

     * British patent No.12039, filed 2 June 1896, issued March, 1897
       (later claimed by Oliver Lodge to contain his own ideas which he
       failed to patent)

US Patents

     * U.S. Patent 0586193 "Transmitting Electical Signals", (using
       Ruhmkorff coil and Morse code key) filed December 1896, patented
       July, 1897
     * U.S. Patent 0624516
     * U.S. Patent 0627650
     * U.S. Patent 0647007
     * U.S. Patent 0647008
     * U.S. Patent 0647009
     * U.S. Patent 0650109
     * U.S. Patent 0650110
     * U.S. Patent 0668315
     * U.S. Patent 0760463
     * U.S. Patent 0676332 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy" (later
       practical version of system)
     * U.S. Patent 0763772 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy" (Four tuned
       system; this innovation was predated by N. Tesla, O. Lodge, and J.
       S. Stone)
     * U.S. Patent 1271190

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