Guglielmo Marconi was born near Bologna, Italy on the 25th April 1874, the second son of Italian country gentlemen, Giuseppe Marconi and his Irish wife, Annie Jameson. He was privately educated and showed a keen early interest in physical and electrical science, studying the works of Maxwell, Hertz and others. In 1895, he began his experiments at his father’s country estate where he succeeded in sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.
Finding limited interest for his work in Italy, Marconi travelled to England in early 1896 to seek support for his ideas. He was introduced to William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the General Post Office, who took a keen interest and offered to support his work. Later in 1896 Marconi was granted the world’s first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. He demonstrated his new system successfully in a series of demonstrations a year later, in London, across Salisbury Plain and then sent the first wireless signals across water, when they transversed the Bristol Channel, a distance of eight and a half miles. Buoyed by his successes Marconi formed The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited in July 1897. Two years later Marconi established wireless communication between France and England across the English Channel.
In 1900 he took out his famous patent No.7777 for “tuned or syntonic telegraphy” and on the 12th December 1901, determined to prove wireless waves were not affected by the curvature of the Earth, he used his system for transmitting the first wireless signals across the Atlantic, between Poldhur in Cornwall and St John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 2,100 miles. In 1904, Marconi built powerful wireless stations on both sides of the Atlantic and established the world’s first commercial wireless service, broadcasting news summaries to subscribing ocean-going vessels. A regular transatlantic radiotelegraphy service became operational three years later. 1912, saw the tragic sinking of the Titanic, and had it not been for the two radio operators, both employees of the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, who radioed for help, there would have been an even greater loss of life.
In 1914 Marconi was commissioned into the Italian Army as a Lieutenant, he was promoted to Captain before being transferred to the Navy as a Commander two years later. After the First World War he returned to his experiments, first investigating short waves and later identifying a beam system for improved long distance communication. In 1931 he began research into the propagation characteristics of still shorter waves, which eventually led to the establishment of microwave radio beacons for ship navigation. Four years later in Italy, Marconi gave his first practical demonstrations on the principles of radar.
Guglielmo Marconi received many honours for his work, most notably, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909, which he shared with Professor Karl Braun. Marconi died in Rome in 1937 at the age of 63. Italy held a state funeral commemorating his life and as a tribute, many radio stations throughout the world observed two minutes of silence.
