Biography of Guglielmo Marconi

Inventor of Wireless Telegraphy

Technology of Radio began as ‘wireless telegraphy’. However, it all started with the discovery of ‘radio waves’ - electromagnetic waves that have the capacity to transmit music, speech, pictures and other data invisibly through the air. Many devices work by using electromagnetic waves including: radio, microwaves, cordless phones, remote controlled toys, television broadcasts and more. The first radio signal was sent by Guglielmo Marchese Marconi an Italian inventor, in Italy in 1895.

Guglielmo Marconi inventor of Wireless Telegraphy was born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. The young Marconi developed a deep interest in electrical phenomena. When he read of the experiments of Hertz on electromagnetic waves, he was obsessed with the idea that such waves could be used for transmitting information without the need for the wire connection of the electric telegraph.

In 1894, Guglielmo Marchese Marconi began his wireless telegraphy project by repeating some of Hertz's experiments with a number of improvements. Marconi offered his wireless communication system to the Italian government, but it was refused. In 1895, he began laboratory experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio where he developed apparatus which could send wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.

Marconi took his apparatus to England where he was introduced to William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the Post Office and later that year was granted the world's first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. He formed Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., in London in July 1897. 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 it was so improved that transatlantic wireless telegraph service was established for public use.

Between 1902 and 1912, he patented several new inventions. In 1902, during a voyage on the American liner ‘Philadelphia’, he first demonstrated ‘daylight effect’ relative to wireless communication and in the same year, patented his magnetic detector which then became the standard wireless receiver for many years. In 1905, he patented his horizontal directional aerial and in 1912 a ‘timed spark’ system for generating continuous waves. He was awarded the Italian Military Medal in 1919 in recognition of his war service.

In 1932, he discovered that still higher frequency waves (microwaves) could be received at a point much farther below the optical horizon than had been predicted by any theory. This phenomenon was exploited later in ‘scatter propagation’ circuits, which added new reliability to communications in arctic regions.

Marconi was awarded honours 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.

On 19th of July 1937, Marconi passed away and wireless stations around the world agreed to close down their transmitters for a short time as a mark of respect. Never again was the world to know such a total radio silence, as it paid its respects to Guglielmo Marconi, the man whose determination had made it all possible.