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Guglielmo Marconi, (April 25, 1874 – July 20, 1937) was an
Italian electrical
engineer and Nobel Prize laureate, known for the development of a
practical wireless telegraphy system that achieved widespread use. Marconi was the President of the Accademia d'Italia. He was
an Italian fascist.
Early years
Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy, the
second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian landowner, and his wife, Annie Jameson, granddaughter of the founder of the Jameson &
Sons Distillery.
Middle years
Although many scientists and inventors contributed to the invention of wireless telegraphy, including Ørsted, Faraday, Hertz, Tesla, Edison, and others, Marconi's
practical system achieved widespread use, so he is often credited as the "father of radio." Marconi's system was based primarily
on Nikola Tesla's system, publicly demonstrated during a widely known lecture titled
On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena , presented before a meeting of the National Electric Light Association
in St. Louis and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Marconi was awarded what is sometimes recognised as the World's first patent for Radio with British Patent 12039, Improvements in transmitting electrical
impulses and signals and in apparatus there-for on July 2, 1897. In July 1897, Marconi formed the London based Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Company (later renamed the Marconi Wireless
Telegraph Company), which opened the World's first "wireless" factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England in 1898, employing around 50
people.
He made a wireless transmission across the water from Ballycastle
(Northern Ireland) to Rathlin Island in 1898.
He received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal on December 12, 1901 in St. John's, Newfoundland (now in Canada) using a 400-foot kite-supported antenna for reception.
The transmitting station in Poldhu, Cornwall used a spark-gap transmitter to
produce a signal with a frequency of approximately 500kHz and a power of 100 times more than any radio signal previously
produced. The message received was three dots, the Morse code for the letter
S. To reach Newfoundland the signal would have to bounce off the ionosphere twice. Dr. Jack Belrose has recently contested
this, however, based on theoretical work as well as an actual reenactment of the experiment; he believes that Marconi heard only
random atmospheric noise and mistook it for the signal.
On March 16, 1905 he married Beatrice O'Brien, daughter of
Edward Donough O'Brien, 14th Baron Inchiquin. They had three daughters, one of
whom lived only a few weeks, and one son. They divorced later.
Marconi didn't achieve fully reliable transatlantic communication until 1907.
He was the founder of the Marconi corporation and the joint 1909 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. During World War I, Marconi was in charge of the Italian wireless service. Marconi developed shortwave secret communication transmissions during this time.
Later years
In 1920 Marconi's Chelmsford factory was the location of the first officially publicised sound broadcasts in the UK, one of them featuring Dame Nellie Melba. In 1922 the World's first
regular wireless broadcasts for entertainment commenced from the Marconi Research
Centre at Writtle near Chelmsford.
Marconi joined the Italian fascist party in
1923. Benito Mussolini made
Marconi President of the Accademia d'Italia, which also made him a member of the Fascist Grand Council.
He made fascist speeches on the Radio in a number of countries.
On June 15, 1927 he married Maria Cristina
Bezzi-Scali. Their daughter was named Maria Elettra Elena Anna Marconi. In 1935, after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the BBC that he had helped found, banned him from broadcasting.
Death and afterwards
Marconi died in Rome on July 20, 1937.
Marconi's claim that he invented radio was always disputed by Nikola
Tesla. Marconi did develop a practical model and was responsible for the first successful exploitation of the invention. In
1943, an ongoing lawsuit regarding this was finally resolved in Tesla's favor. This
decision was based on the fact that there was prior work existing before the establishment of Marconi's patent. At the time, the
United States Army was involved in a patent infringement
lawsuit with Marconi's company regarding radio, leading some to posit that the government granted Tesla the patent on order to
nullify any claims Marconi would have to compensation (as, some posit, the government's initial granting to Marconi the patent
right in order to nullify any claims Tesla had for compensation).
External links and resources
Radio
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