Guglielmo Marconi

1. Born 25 April 1874 Died 20 July 1937 (heart failure) Birthplace Bologna, Italy Best known as Italian pioneer of wireless telegraphyGuglielmo Marconi was an IrishItalian inventor and entrepreneur who popularized wireless telegraphy early in the 20th century. One of the founding fathers of radio communication, Marconi got interested in 1894 in the electromagnetic wave experiments by H. R. Hertz. Working at his fathers estate, Marconi devised a work .....

Synopsis

2. Born in Bologna, Italy, in 1874, Guglielmo Marconi was a Nobel Prizewinning physicist and inventor credited with the groundbreaking work necessary for all future radio technology. Through his experiments in wireless telegraphy, Marconi developed the first effective system of radio communication. In 1899, he founded the Marconi Telegraph Company. In 1901, he successfully sent wireless signals across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving the dominant beli .....

Early Life and Education

3. Born on April 25, 1874, in Bologna, Italy, into a wealthy family, and educated largely at home, Guglielmo Marconi began experimenting with electromagnetics as a student at the Livorno Technical Institute. Incorporating the earlier findings of H.R. Hertz, he was able to develop a basic system of wireless telegraphy, for which he received his first patent in England. .....

Groundbreaking Work and Nobel Prize

4. Marconi founded the Londonbased Marconi Telegraph Company in 1899. Though his original transmission traveled a mere mile and a half, on December 12, 1901, Marconi sent and received the first wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean, from Cornwall, England, to a military base in Newfoundland. His experiment was significant, as it disproved the dominant belief of the Earths curvature affecting transmission.Beginning in 1902, Marconi worked on exp .....

Later Years

5. Marconi continued to experiment with radio technology in his native Italy until his death, on July 20, 1937, in Rome, from heart failure.1943, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Marconis radio patent invalid because work by other scientists, including Nikola Tesla, predated some of his findings. .....

Personal Life

6. Marconi married for the first time in 1905, to Beatrice OBrien, the daughter of Edward Donough OBrien, 14th Baron Inchiquin. He and Beatrice had three children a son, Giulio, and two daughters, Degna and Gioia before their union was annulled in 1927. That same year, Marconi wed Countess BezziScali of Rome, with whom he had one daughter, Elettra, named after his yacht. .....

Guglielmo Marconi in England

7. The 22yearold Marconi and his mother arrived in England in 1896 and quickly found interested backers, including the British Post Office. Within a year Marconi was broadcasting up to 12 miles and had applied for his first patents. A year later, he set up a wireless station on the Isle of Wight that allowed Queen Victoria to send messages to her son Prince Edward aboard the royal yacht.By 1899 Marconis signals had crossed the English Channel. The s .....

Guglielmo Marconi and the Transatlantic S

8. Marconi began to work on improving his wireless for a transatlantic broadcast. Many physicists argued that radio waves traveled in straight lines, making it impossible for signals to be broadcast beyond the horizon, but Marconi believed they would follow the planets curvature. (In fact, the waves do travel in straight lines but bounce off the ionosphere, approximating a curve.) After failed attempts to receive a signal from England on Cape Cod, M .....

Guglielmo Marconi the Nobel Prize and Titanic

9. In 1909 Marconi shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with the German physicist Karl F. Braun, the inventor of the cathode ray tube. Marconis accolades were not without controversy many other men had claims (some dubious, some not) to the Father of Radio title. As early as 1895, the Russian physicist Alexander Popov was broadcasting between buildings, while in India Jagdish Chandra Bose was using radio waves to ring bells and trigger explosions. In 1 .....

Guglielmo Marconis Later Years and Legacy

10. For the next two decades, Marconi continued refining his inventions, experimenting with shortwave broadcasts and testing transmission distances aboard his 700ton yacht, Elettra. He returned to Italy, became a supporter of Benito Mussolini and annulled his first marriage to an Irish artist with whom he had four children to wed an Italian noblewoman. In 1935 he toured Brazil and Europe defending Mussolinis invasion of Abyssinia. He died two years l .....

Contributions and Achievements

11. Marconi was convinced that communication among people was possible via wireless radio signaling. He started conducting experiment in 1895 at his fathers home in Pontecchio, where he was soon able to send signals over one and a half miles. During this period, he also carried out simple experiments with reflectors around the aerial to concentrate the radiated electrical energy into a beam instead of spreading it in all directions.In 1896 Marconi tr .....

Later Life

12. In 1914, he took the position of a Lieutenant in the Italian Army. Later he was promoted to Captain and in 1916 was appointed as a Commander in the Navy, receiving his Italian Military Medal in 1919 for his war service. He also used his systems for the workings of the military. During this time he continued with his experiments, establishing the worlds first microwave radiotelephone link in 1932, and later introducing the microwave beacon for shi .....

Marconis childhood

13. Guglielmo Marconi was born on 25th April 1874 in Bologna in Northern Italy.Marconis, father, Guiseppe, was a widower and wealthy Italian. His mother came from a Scottish and Irish family of brewers and distillers, and she ran away from home to marry him.Marconis mother loved to travel and the young Guglielmo accompanied her on many of her trips. As a result the young Marconi received private tuition, this gave him further insight into some of the .....

Marconis wireless experiments

14. With Marconis interest fired with ideas of Hertzian Waves. He started by repeating the experiments of Heinrich Hertz who had discovered their existence. These experiments used a spark in a transmitting circuit to induce a second but smaller spark in a receiving circuit placed a short distance away.Like Hertz he only managed to achieve ranges of a few metres. Later he managed to improve the distance over which the spark could be detected by using .....

Move

15. History shows that Guglielmo Marconi was not deterred by his rejection, but in order to be able to exploit his idea he moved to England with his mother in February 1896.On their arrival, Marconi and his mother were met by his cousin, Henry JamesonDavies. He was an engineer himself, and gave the young Marconi an introduction to A.A. Campbell Swinton, Scottish consulting electrical engineer who was interested in communications and had been followin .....

Marconi opens for business

16. With the success of these tests interest in the possible uses of radio grew, and in July 1897 Marconi decided that he had to launch his own company. Named the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited its foundation allowed him to borrow further money to allow further tests and development to be performed. With financial backing behind him he continued his developments and tests.Little was still understood about Wireless or Hertzian waves and .....

Marconi prepares for the Atlantic

17. The first stage of his preparation for a transatlantic transmission was for Marconi to convince his fellow directors that this test, which would have enormous expense associated with it would be worthwhile. Marconi faced a tough battle to convince them, but eventually he succeeded in gaining their reluctant agreement for this massive project.To enable the long range radio communications to be established, it was essential to choose the correct si .....

Flemings transmitter

18. In order to meet the requirements for a transatlantic transmission, a totally new form of transmitter would be required. One with a far greater power generation capacity was needed.The task of designing and developing this new radio transmitter fell to Ambrose Fleming. He was Professor at University College London and a consultant to Marconis company.In Flemings transmitter an alternator charges the capacitor C1 through a circuit that is resonant .....

Marconi rebuilds the transatlantic stations

19. The collapse of the antennas at Poldhu and Cape Cod dealt a devastating blow to Marconi. He had invested enormous sums into the building of these two stations and their antennas.But Marconi did not let this setback defeat him. With typical resilience he set about the task of rebuilding. This time he made the Poldhu antenna smaller and more robust.He also decided to move the site of the American station to Newfoundland to shorten the distance of t .....

Further Atlantic transmissions

20. While Marconi genuinely believed that he had heard the radio signals from Poldu, they were so weak that it would not have been possible to send a full message across the Atlantic. Unfortunately Marconi was not allowed to repeat the experiment because the local telegraph company exerted its rights to a monopoly and forced him to close his station there.Again Marconi had to move, and this time he set up a new radio communications station on Cape Br .....

Further transmissions

21. The main area of business for Marconis company was to provide communications systems for ships. With the transatlantic link established more ships took the Marconi system on board. The first commercial installation on a merchant ship was completed in 1900, and by 1902 seventy ships had Marconi systems on board.The initial long distance transmissions had been made using very long wavelengths, typically in excess of 2000 metres. Then in the early 1 .....

Marconi 7777 patent

22. One of Marconis most famous inventions was that of tuning. The famous Marconi 7777 patent for Improvements in Apparatus for Wireless Telegraphy was granted on 26 April 1901. It arose out of the need to separate signals from each other because one of the major problems Marconi faced was that of interference between different transmitting stations. Using the concept behind the Marconi 7777 patent tuning of the transmitter, receiver and antenna enab .....

Magnetic detectors

23. The coherer had long been used but was a particularly insensitive element within the overall radio communications system. It needed a very large spark discharge to cohere. As a result new forms of detector were investigated and after much work Marconi patented the magnetic detector as an invention.From around 1902 ships that had Marconi radio communications equipment installed on them used the magnetic detector. It provided a higher level of sens .....

Marconi business growing pains

24. The business model Marconi used for his radio communications equipment was to charge a rental fee. This also included the fees for the use of a trained radio operator and the use of the Marconi shore based stations. In this way he did not infringe the monopoly held at that time by the British General Post Office.This arrangement also enabled the company to restrict competition as users with equipment from competitors could not use the shore stati .....

Transmitter improvements

25. Early transmitter technology used a spark discharge connected to an aerial to provide the signal. Today this seems a particularly crude form of radio communications technology. Marconi had noted that the technology had been in use for a number of years and needed improving to ensure the continued development of the overall radio communications technology.One of the key issues was that once the spark was struck, and remained conductive, the radio .....

Marconis father

26. Marconis father Guiseppe was much older than his mother and in 1904 Guiseppe died.The time when he died was an important time for Guglielme Marconi, and in addition to this the young Marconi was very focussed on his long distance radio communications business that was experiencing difficult times. It took up all of his time and thought because although he was a leader in technology, radio communications was a new area and was only giving a very s .....

Marconi marries

27. In many ways, Marconi was a very eligible bachelor. Twice he became engaged to American girls while he was on one of his many transatlantic voyages to test out or monitor the progress of his radio communications equipment.When he eventually married, it was on 16 March 1905 to a nineteen year old Irish girl named Beatrice OBrien who was known as Bea for short. Although she was the daughter of late 13th Lord lnchiquin, a descendant of Brian Boru, w .....

Titanic journey narrowly avoided

28. Marconi was a frequent transatlantic traveller in support of all the transatlantic radio communications links. In view of their status and frequent travel, they had been invited to be guests on the illfated maiden voyage of the new prestige liner.However Marconi himself had to transfer to an earlier sailing to enable him to meet his business commitments leaving Bea to travel on the Titanic.Fortunately at the last moment Bea had to cancel her plac .....

Honours and rejections

29. With the many successes of Marconis radio communications business he received many honours. The greatest of these was in 1909 when he was presented with the Nobel Prize in physics which shared with Karl Ferdinand Braun, who had modified Marconis transmitters to increase their range and practicality.In July 1914, Marconi was honoured in Britain by King George V with the honorary title of Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. However as .....

Marriage breakup and a new start

30. In 1924 Marconis marriage to Bea broke up. With Marconis devotion to his business, life had never made his marriage easy.Nevertheless a few years after the breakup Marconi married an Italian named Cristina BezziScali. It was not easy to arrange the marriage because Marconi was a divorcee and she was a Catholic. Also around this time, Marconi himself became a Catholic.Then in 1930, a daughter was born to the couple. She was named Elettra and was t .....

Microwaves and Papal links

31. Although at this stage of his life, Marconi was taking less of a day to day interest in the technology and business affairs of his company he never fully retired.With new radio communications technology becoming available, he was able to investigate the use of very short wavelength signals. In particular he was interested in whether it was possible to establish two way radio communications links over paths that were beyond the line of sight.As Cr .....

Marconi and radar

32. Marconi was by nature a practical engineer and a visionary who saw the applications for his radio communications technology. When addressing a meeting of American radio engineers in New York, in June 1922, Marconi foresaw a new type of radio technique that would emit radio signals, and then detect any reflections. This he described could be used to detect ships at sea.Development was undertaken by Marconis company in marine location and direction .....

Marconi and television

33. Not only was Marconi involved with radar, but he also took an interest in the growing technology of television. He supported the EMI high definition (for the time) system.The Marconi company became heavily involved in television during 1934. The company worked with EMI Ltd in a venture to develop a high definition television system based using electronic scanning with images displayed on a cathode ray tube.This system was a rival to the mechanica .....

Marconis death

34. In the last ten years of his life, Marconi suffered a number of heart attacks. Marconi was more also involved with politics and the interests of his native Italy. With the worsening political situation in Europe, this brought a considerable strain on Marconi.In 1937 his health worsened. Sadly, the night before his daughter Elettras seventh birthday his wife was away. Marconi had been due to meet with Mussolini, who he said never listened to him, .....