Guglielmo Marchese Marconi, Italian electrical engineer and Nobel laureate, known as the inventor of the first practical radio-signaling system. He was born in Bologna and educated at the University of Bologna. As early as 1890 he became interested in wireless telegraphy, and by 1895 he had developed apparatus with which he succeeded in sending signals to a point a few kilometers away by means of a directional antenna.

After patenting his system in Great Britain, he formed (1897) Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., in London. In 1899 he established communication across the English Channel between England and France, and in 1901 he communicated signals across the Atlantic Ocean between Poldhu, in Cornwall, England, and St. John's, in Newfoundland, Canada. His system was soon adopted by the British and Italian navies, and by 1907 had been so much improved that transatlantic wireless telegraph service was established for public use.

Marconi was awarded honors by many countries and received, jointly with the German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun, the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in wireless telegraphy. During World War I he was in charge of the Italian wireless service and developed short-wave transmission as a means of secret communication. In the remaining years of his life he experimented with shortwaves and microwaves.

TO LEARN MORE

RELATED INFORMATION:
Communication History   from The Great Idea Finder
Nobel Prize Inventors   from The Great Idea Finder

ON THE BOOKSHELF:
Guglielmo Marconi: Radio Pioneer (Giants of Science)
by Beverley Birch / Library Binding - 64 pages (2001) / Blackbirch Marketing
Describes the life and work of the Italian inventor, who was a pioneer in the development of the radio
Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation
by Robert E. Adler / Hardcover: 288 pages / John Wiley & Sons, 1 edition (September 13, 2002)
Throughout the history of science, there have always been those whose curiosity and intellect led them to explore uncharted territories and seek new explanations for the way the universe works.
Marconi
by Giancarlo Masini, Frank D. Stella / Paperback - 380 pages Reprint edition (1999) / Marsilio Pub;
A precocious farm boy with a passion for electronics, 21-year-old Guglielmo Marconi carried out the first wireless telegraph transmission in 1895, assuring the birth of radio.
Marconi My Beloved
by Maria Cristina Marconi, Elettra Marconi  / Hardcover (October 1999) / Dante Univ of Amer Pr;
Marchesa Maria Cristina Marconi has written the biography of her famous husband and Nobel Prize winner, Guglielmo Marconi. The book also contains Marconi's other experiments, especially those dealing with radar.

ON THE WEB:
Guglielmo Marconi – Biography
Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1909.
(URL: www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1909/marconi-bio.html)
U.S. Marconi Museum
The U.S. National Marconi Museum is located in Bedford, New Hampshire.
(URL: www.marconiusa.org)
National Inventors Hall of Fame
Located at Inventure Place, the online home of creative minds.Transmitting Electrical Signals
Radio, Patent Number 586,193
(URL: www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/97.html)
Encarta Encyclopedia
The online version is your gateway to 16,000 abriged references, articles and world atlas.
(URL: encarta.msn.com/)
People and Dicoveries
The year was 1894, and the most modern way to send a message was over telegraph wires. (Heinrich Hertz, for whom the units hertz and megahertz are named, had discovered and first produced radio waves in 1888.)
(URL: www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/btmarc.html)
Communications for Goodness Sake
Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. (Requires Falsh player.)
(URL: www.marconifoundation.org/index_content.html)
Wireless Radio Transmission
Marconi, (like every self-taught man) was more interested in practice than theory, and so he placed his transmitter near his house and the receiver three kilometres away, behind a hill.
(URL: www.italian-american.com/marconi.htm)

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