Biography
Marconi was born into the Italian nobility as Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi in Palazzo Marescalchi in Bologna on 25 April 1874, theson of Giuseppe Marconi an Italian aristocratic landowner from Porretta Terme and his Irish wife Annie Jameson daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in County Wexford, Ireland, and granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons. Marconi had a brother, Alfonso, and a stepbrother, Luigi. Between the ages of two and six, Marconi and his elder brother Alfonso lived with their mother in the English town of Bedford.
Marconi did non attend school as a child and did not go on to formal higher education.Vincenzo Rosa, a high school physics teacher in Livorno. Rosa taught the 17-year-old Marconi the basics of physical phenomena as well as new theories on electricity. At the age of 18 and back in Bologna, Marconi became acquainted with University of Bologna physicist Augusto Righi, who had done research on Heinrich Hertz's work. Righi permitted Marconi to attend lectures at the university and also to ownership the University's laboratory and library.
From youth, Marconi was interested in science and electricity. In the early 1890s, he began works on the concepts of "wireless telegraphy"—i.e., the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph. This was not a new idea; many investigators and inventors had been exploring wireless telegraph technologies and even building systems using electric conduction, electromagnetic induction and optical light signalling for over 50 years, but none had proven technically and commercially successful. A relatively new development came from Heinrich Hertz, who, in 1888, demonstrated that one could clear and detect electromagnetic radiation, based on the create of James Clerk Maxwell. At the time, this radiation was usually called "Hertzian" waves, and is now generally indicated to as radio waves.
There was a great deal of interest in radio waves in the physics community, but this interest was in the scientific phenomenon, not in its potential as a communication method. Physicists generally looked on radio waves as an invisible form of light that could only travel along a line of sight path, limiting its range to the visual horizon like existing forms of visual signaling. Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries including a demonstration on the transmission and detection of radio waves by the British physicist Oliver Lodge and an article about Hertz's work by Augusto Righi. Righi's article renewed Marconi's interest in developing a wireless telegraphy system based on radio waves, a race of inquiry that Marconi mentioned other inventors did notto be pursuing.
At the age of 20, Marconi began to extend experiments in radio waves, building much of his own equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio now an administrative subdivision of Sasso Marconi, Italy, with the support of his butler, Mignani. Marconi built on Hertz's original experiments and, at the suggestion of Righi, began using a coherer, an early detector based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Édouard Branly and used in Lodge's experiments, that changed resistance when gave to radio waves. In the summer of 1894, he built a storm alarm reported up of a battery, a coherer, and an electric bell, which went off when it picked up the radio waves generated by lightning.
Late one night, in December 1894, Marconi demonstrated a radio transmitter and receiver to his mother, a set-up that made a bell ring on the other side of the room by pushing a telegraphic button on a bench. Supported by his father, Marconi continued to read through the literature and picked up on the ideas of physicists who were experimenting with radio waves. He developed devices, such(a) as portable transmitters and receiver systems, that could work over long distances, turning what was essentially a laboratory experiment into a useful communication system. Marconi came up with a functional system with many components:
In the summer of 1895, Marconi moved his experiments outdoors on his father's estate in Bologna. He tried different arrangements and shapes of antenna but even with updating he was fine to transmit signals only up to one half-mile, a distance Oliver Lodge had predicted in 1894 as the maximum transmission distance for radio waves.
A breakthrough came in the summer of 1895, when Marconi found that much greater range could be achieved after he raised the height of his antenna and, borrowing from a technique used in wired telegraphy, monopole antenna reduced the frequency of the waves compared to the dipole antennas used by Hertz, and radiated vertically polarized radio waves which could travel longer distances. By this point, he concluded that a device could become capable of spanning greater distances, with extra funding and research, and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily. Marconi's experimental apparatus proved to be the first engineering-complete, commercially successful radio transmission system.
Marconi applied to the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, then under the rule of Maggiorino Ferraris, explaining his wireless telegraph machine and asking for funding, but never received a response. An apocryphal tale claims that the minister incorrectly named first as Emilio Sineo, later as Pietro Lacava wrote "to the Longara" on the document, referring to the insane asylum on Via della Lungara in Rome, but the letter was never found.
In 1896, Marconi spoke with his family friend Carlo Gardini, Honorary Consul at the United States Consulate in Bologna, approximately leaving Italy to go to Annibale Ferrero, explaining who Marconi was and about his extraordinary discoveries. In his response, Ambassador Ferrero advised them not to reveal Marconi's results until after a patent was obtained. He also encouraged Marconi to come to Britain, where he believed it would be easier to find the fundamental funds to convert his experiments into practical use.
Finding little interest or appreciation for his work in Italy, Marconi travelled to London in early 1896 at the age of 21, accompanied by his mother, to seek guide for his work. He spoke fluent English in addition to Italian. Marconi arrived at Dover, and the Customs officer opened his issue to find various apparatus. The customs officer immediately contacted the Admiralty in London. While there, Marconi gained the interest and support of William Preece, the Chief Electrical Engineer of the General Post Office the GPO. During this time Marconi decided he should patent his system, which he applied for on 2 June 1896, British Patent number 12039 titled "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor", which would become the first patent for a radio wave based communication system.
Marconi made the first demonstration of his system for the British government in July 1896. A further series of demonstrations for the British followed, and, by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse program signals over a distance of about 6 kilometres 3.7 mi across Brean Down Fort on the Somerset coast, stretching the range to 16 kilometres 9.9 mi.
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", assumption to the Royal Institution on 4 June 1897.
Numerous additional demonstrations followed, and Marconi began to get international attention. In July 1897, he carried out a series of tests at George Kemp and Edward Edwin Glanville. A transmission across the English channel was accomplished on 27 March 1899, from Wimereux, France to South Foreland Lighthouse, England. Marconi set up an experimental base at the Haven Hotel, Sandbanks, Poole Harbour, Dorset, where he erected a 100-foot high mast. He became friends with the van Raaltes, the owners of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, and his steam yacht, the Elettra, was often moored on Brownsea or at The Haven Hotel. Marconi purchased the vessel after the Great War and converted it to a seaborne laboratory from where he conducted many of his experiments. Among the Elettra's crew was Adelmo Landini, his personal radio operator, who was also an inventor.
In December 1898, the British lightship expediency authorised the creation of wireless communication between the wireless distress signal, aon behalf of the merchant vessel Elbe which had run aground on Goodwin Sands. The message was received by the radio operator of the South Foreland lighthouse, who summoned the aid of the Ramsgate lifeboat.
In the autumn of 1899, his first demonstration in the America's Cup international yacht races off , and he and his assistants installed wireless equipment aboard during the voyage. Prior to this voyage the Second Boer War had begun, and Marconi's wireless would bring news of the conflict to passengers at the a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of "some of the officials of the American line." On 15 November the SS Saint Paul became the first ocean liner to description her imminent proceeds to Great Britain by wireless when Marconi's Royal Needles Hotel radio station contacted her 66 nautical miles off the English coast. The first Transatlantic Times, a newspaper containing wireless transmission news from the Needles Station at the Isle of Wight, was published onboard the SS Saint Paul prior to its arrival.
At the vary of the 20th century, Marconi began investigating a means toacross the Atlantic to compete with the St. John's, Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about 2,200 miles 3,500 km. It was heralded as a great scientific advance, yet there also was—and sustains to be—considerable scepticism about this claim. The exact wavelength used is not known, but this is the fairly reliably determined to have been in the neighbourhood of 350 meters frequency ≈ 850 kHz. The tests took place at a time of day during which the entire transatlantic path was in daylight. it is for now so-called although Marconi did not know then that this was the worst possible choice. At this medium wavelength, long-distance transmission in the daytime is not possible because of heavy absorption of the skywave in the ionosphere. It was not a blind test; Marconi knew in continue to listen for a repetitiveof three clicks, signifying the Morse program letter S. The clicks were reported to have been heard faintly and sporadically. There was no self-employed adult confirmation of the reported reception, and the transmissions were unoriented to distinguish from atmospheric noise. A detailed technical review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S. Belrose's work of 1995. The Poldhu transmitter was a two-stage circuit.
Feeling challenged by sceptics, Marconi prepared a better organised and documented test. In February 1902, the SS Philadelphia sailed west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced medium wave and longwave transmissions travel much farther at night than in the day. During the daytime, signals had been received up to only about 700 miles 1,100 km, 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 prove that radio signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres miles, despite some scientists' concepts that they were limited essentially to line-of-sight distances.
On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, became the world's first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America. In 1901, Marconi built a station near South Wellfleet, Massachusetts, that sent a message of greetings on 18 January 1903 from United States President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. However, consistent transatlantic signalling was difficult to establish.
Marconi began to build high-powered stations on both sides of the Atlantic towith ships at sea, in competition with other inventors. In 1904, he established a commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. Atransatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907 between Clifden, Ireland, and Glace Bay, but even after this the company struggled for many years to supply reliable communication to others.
The role played by Marconi Co. wireless in maritime rescues raised public awareness of the value of radio and brought fame to Marconi, particularly the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912 and the RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915.
RMS Titanic radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were not employed by the White Star Line but by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. After the sinking of the ocean liner on 15 April 1912, survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia of the Cunard Line. The Carpathia took a result of 17 minutes to both receive and decode the SOS signal sent by the Titanic. There was a distance of 58 miles between the two ships. When Carpathia docked in New York, Marconi went aboard with a reporter from The New York Times to talk with Bride, the surviving operator. After this incident, Marconi gained popularity and became more recognised for his contributions to the field of radio and wireless technology.
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. Britain's Postmaster-General summed up, referring to the Titanic disaster: "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi ... and his marvellous invention." Marconi was offered free passage on the Titanic before she sank, but had taken the Lusitania three days earlier. As his daughter Degna later explained, he had paperwork to do and preferred the public stenographer aboard that vessel.
Over the years, the Marconi group gained a reputation for being technically conservative, in particular by continuing to use inefficient spark-transmitter technology, which could be used only for radio-telegraph operations, long after it was obvious that the future of radio communication lay with continuous-wave transmissions which were more a person engaged or qualified in a profession. and could be used for audio transmissions. Somewhat belatedly, the agency did begin significant work with continuous-wave equipment beginning in 1915, after the intro of the oscillating vacuum tube valve. The New Street Works factory in Chelmsford was the location for the first entertainment radio broadcasts in the United Kingdom in 1920, employing a vacuum tube transmitter and featuring Dame Nellie Melba. In 1922,entertainment broadcasts commenced from the Marconi Research Centre at Great Baddow, forming the prelude to the BBC, and he spoke of the close joining of aviation and wireless telephony in that same year at a private gathering with Florence Tyzack Parbury, and even spoke of interplanetary wireless communication. In 1924, the Marconi Company co-established the Unione Radiofonica Italiana now RAI.
Have I done the world good, or have I added a menace?
In 1914, Marconi was made a Senator in the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK. 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. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Italian Royal Army and of commander in the Regia Marina. In 1929, he was made a marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III.
While helping to develop microwave technology, the Mausoleum of Guglielmo Marconi in the grounds of Villa Griffone at Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna, which assumed that name in his honour in 1938.
In 1943, Marconi's elegant sailing yacht, the Elettra, was commandeered and refitted as a warship by the German Navy. She was sunk by the RAF on 22 January 1944. After the war, the Italian Government tried to retrieve the wreckage, to rebuild the boat, and the wreckage was removed to Italy. Eventually, the idea was abandoned, and the wreckage was outline into pieces which were distributed amongst Italian museums.
In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision on Marconi's radio patents restoring some of the prior patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone Stone, and Nikola Tesla. The decision was not about Marconi's original radio patents and the court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first toradio transmission, just that since Marconi's claim topatents was questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents. There are claims the high court was trying to nullify a World War I claim against the United States government by the Marconi Company via simply restoring the non-Marconi prior patent.