Guglielmo Marconi and the History of Radio
by Marci RanzerOn December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi the Italian inventor and electrical engineer sent the first radio signals across the Atlantic from Cornwall to Newfoundland, a distance of over 2,000 miles. Using basic methods, he proved to the world the long distance power, speed, and strength of radio waves.
Biography on Guglielmo Marconi’s Personal Life
Marconi was born on April 25, 1874 in Italy. Marconi’s father was Giuseppe Marconi, a wealthy Italian landowner and his mother was Annie Jameson, from Ireland. He would grow up to feel at home in both Italian and Irish cultures. Religiously, he was brought up as a Protestant. His childhood was spent in the Villa Griffone home near Bologna, Italy. However, for a short time attended Rugby School in the United Kingdom.
On March 16, 1905, Beatrice O’Brien married Marconi. Guglielmo Marconi and Beatrice O’Brien had three daughters and one son together. However, the marriage did not last. The two eventually divorced in 1927. He later got married again to Countess Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali.
Marconi died of a heart attack on July 20, 1937 in Italy at 63 years of age. He was buried in the mausoleum on the Villa Griffone grounds. On that day radio stations throughout the world observed two minutes of silence on the radio as a way of honoring all that Marconi had achieved for radio.
Biography on Guglielmo Marconi’s Interest and Impact on Radio
Marconi developed an enthusiastic interest in science at a young age. He read widely, including the papers of Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist who experimented with electromagnetic waves. Marconi lived in a time when wires carried telegraph messages. Yet such wires could not be laid over large areas of land and sea. Ships could not be warned of bad weather and they couldn’t even signal for help. Marconi imagined what if electromagnetic waves without the necessity of wires could carry a long distant message through the air. He hoped that the power of radio waves could reach ships that were located far from the shore in order to create safer ship travel.
In 1894, Marconi sent the taps of the Morse code across his father’s estate, a distance of over one mile from a battery-powered transmitter that he built in his attack. However, in Italy, he found that few people had an appreciation for his invention. Therefore, at the age of 22, he sailed to England. At the time England was extremely interested and invested in maritime inventions and methods to improve maritime safety and travel. He soon patented his black box and in 1896, he created the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, which he later renamed the Marconi Company.
In Britain, a monopoly controlled all land based commercial message handling. As a result, Marconi focused his efforts on ship to shore transmissions. Embarking on a series of signal sending demonstrations to generate business, he soon attracted the advocates of the shipping world, the British army, the navy, and Lloyds of London, who insured shippers. By 1899, he was able to send the signal 30 miles across the English Channel to Wimereux on the northern coast of France. Then, a series of shore-to-shore demonstrations proved neither heavy fog nor stormy seas interrupted radio waves.
Marconi’s First Transatlantic Wireless Radio Message at St. Johns
Like many physicist of his day, Marconi thought that electromagnetic waves traveled like light in a straight line. What would happen, he wondered, when sending a signal thousands of miles beyond the horizon. He announced that he would try to transmit a signal across the Atlantic Ocean. In July of 1900, in Poldu, Cornwall, he constructed a ring of masks 200 feet in diameter with transmitting aerials. But soon after it was operating, high winds ripped it apart. A similar problem occurred at Marconi’s receiver station in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, one short month before he had scheduled his first transatlantic transmission. Marconi would not postpone his test. In Poldu, he created a fan shaped antenna. On the North American side, he found a hill top plateau on signal hill overlooking St. John’s Port in Newfoundland. There with his two assistants, he attached an antenna to a kite and set it 400 feet over the storming Atlantic.
On the morning of December 12, 1901, in an old abandoned hospital, Marconi took turns with his assistants listening on the earphone for signals from Cornwall. At noon, he heard three sharp clicks, Morse code for the letter S. A signal carried 2137 miles without hindrance by the earth’s curve, capable of reaching the far corners of the world. Marconi’s discovery marked the dawn of the age of radio.
Marconi Spoke:
“To Ello, Marconi House London calling. To Ello, Marconi House London calling.”
Throughout his life, Marconi continued experimenting in radio. Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1909. In later years, Marconi’s interests turned to transmitting the voice by radio. And in 1920, a regular news broadcast in Britain was initiated by Marconi.
Radio history would never be the same due to Marconi’s inventions. Soon, hundreds of programs soon filled the airwaves and the world’s fascination with radio was born, just 20 years after that historic day, when Marconi’s First Transatlantic Wireless Radio Message at St. Johns was received.
