Guglielmo Marconi the Nobel Prize and Titanic

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 1901 the SerbianAmerican electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla said he had developed a wireless telegraph in 1893; in 1943 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated four Marconi radio patents, citing Teslas prior work. As shipping companies realized the radio telegraphs usefulness for passenger communication, navigation reports and distress signals, Marconi Company radios operated by trained cadres of Marconi Men became standard equipment. When RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1913, its Marconi operator was able to summon RMS Carpathia to the scene to pick up 700 survivors.