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10/5/2016 Guglielmo Marconi Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Guglielmo Marconi From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Guglielmo Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (Italian: [ɡuʎ ˈʎɛlmo marˈkoːni]; 25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an Italian Guglielmo Marconi inventor and electrical engineer known for his pioneering work on longdistance radio transmission[1] and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. He is often credited as the inventor of radio,[2] and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".[3][4][5] Marconi was an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom in 1897 (which became the Marconi Company). He succeeded in making a commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and physicists.[6][7] In 1929, the King of Italy ennobled Marconi as a Marchese (marquis). Born Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi Contents 25 April 1874 Palazzo Marescalchi, Bologna, 1 Biography Italy 1.1 Early years 1.2 Radio work Died 20 July 1937 (aged 63) 1.2.1 Developing radio telegraphy Rome, Italy 1.2.2 Transmission breakthrough Residence Italy 1.2.3 The British become interested 1.2.4 Transatlantic transmissions Nationality Italian 1.2.5 Titanic Alma mater University of Bologna 1.2.6 Continuing work 1.3 Later years Academic Augusto Righi 2 Personal life advisors 3 Legacy and honours Known for Radio 3.1 Honours and awards 3.2 Tributes Notable awards Matteucci Medal (1901) 3.3 Places and organizations named after Nobel Prize for Physics (1909) Marconi Albert Medal (1914) 3.3.1 Outer space Franklin Medal (1918) 3.3.2 Europe 3.3.2.1 Italy IEEE Medal of Honor (1920) 3.3.3 Oceania John Fritz Medal (1923) 3.3.3.1 Australia Signature 3.3.4 North America 3.3.4.1 Canada 3.3.4.2 United States 3.3.4.2.1 California 3.3.4.2.2 Massachusetts 3.3.4.2.3 New Jersey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi 1/18 10/5/2016 Guglielmo Marconi Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 3.3.4.2.3 New Jersey 3.3.4.2.4 New York 3.3.4.2.5 Pennsylvania 4 Patents 4.1 British patents 4.2 US patents 4.3 Reissued (US) 5 See also 6 References 7 Cited sources 8 Further reading 9 External links Biography Early years Marconi was born into the Italian nobility as Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi[8] in Bologna on 25 April 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi (an Italian aristocratic landowner from Porretta Terme) and his Irish/Scots wife Annie Jameson (daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in County Wexford, Ireland and granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons[9]). Between the ages of two and six, Marconi and his elder brother Alfonso were brought up by his mother in the English town of Bedford.[10][11] After returning to Italy, at age 18 University of Bologna physicist Augusto Righi, neighbour of Marconi who had done research on Heinrich Hertz's work, permitted Marconi to attend lectures at the university and use the lab and library as well.[12] Marconi received further education in Florence at the Istituto Cavallero and, later, in Livorno.[13] Marconi did not do well in school, according to Robert McHenry,[14] though historian Giuliano Corradi characterizes him in his biography as a true genius.[15] He was baptized as a Catholic but had been brought up as a member of the Anglican Church, being married into it (although this marriage was later annulled). Marconi was confirmed in the Catholic faith and became a devout member of the Church before his marriage to Maria Christina in 1927.[16] Radio work During his early years, Marconi had an interest in science and electricity and in the early 1890s he began working on the idea of "wireless telegraphy"—i.e., the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph. This was not a new idea; numerous investigators and inventors had been exploring wireless telegraph technologies and even building systems using electric conduction, electromagnetic induction and optical (light) signalling for over 50 years, but none had proven technically and commercially successful. A relatively new development came from Heinrich Hertz, who demonstrated beginning in 1888 that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation—now generally known as radio waves, at the time more commonly called "Hertzian waves" or "aetheric waves". There was a great deal of interest in radio waves in the physics community, but the interest was in radio as a scientific phenomenon, not in its potential as a communication method. Physicists generally looked on radio waves as an invisible form of light, a short range phenomenon which could only travel along a line of sight path, and thus its range was limited to the visual horizon like existing forms of visual signaling, making it unsuitable for long distance communication.[17] Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries including a demonstration on the transmission and detection of radio waves by the British physicist Oliver Lodge and an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi 2/18 10/5/2016 Guglielmo Marconi Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia article about Hertz's work by Marconi's teacher, Augusto Righi. Righi's article renewed Marconi's interest in developing a wireless telegraphy system based on radio waves,[18] a line of inquiry that he noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing.[6] Developing radio telegraphy Marconi, just twenty years old, began to conduct experiments, building much of his own equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy with the help of his butler Mignani. In the summer of 1894, he built a storm alarm made up of a battery, a coherer (an early detector that changed resistance when exposed to radio waves), and an electric bell, which went off if there was lightning. Soon after he was able to make a bell ring on the other side of the room by pushing a telegraphic button on a bench.[19] One night in December 1894, Guglielmo woke his mother and invited her into his secret workshop and showed her the experiment that he had created. The next day, he also showed his work to his father, who gave his son all of the money he had in his wallet when he was certain that there were no wires, so that Guglielmo could buy more materials. Marconi read through the literature and picked up on the ideas of physicists who were experimenting with radio waves, but did a great deal to develop devices, such as portable transmitters and receiver systems, that could work over long distances,[6] turning what was essentially a laboratory experiment Marconi's first transmitter into a useful communication system.[20] Marconi came up with a functional incorporating a monopole antenna. It consisted of an elevated copper sheet system with many components:[21] (top) connected to a Righi spark gap A relatively simple oscillator or sparkproducing radio transmitter; (left) powered by an induction coil A wire or metal sheet capacity area suspended at a height above the (center) with a telegraph key (right) ground; to switch it on and off to spell out A coherer receiver, which was a modification of Edouard Branly's text messages in Morse code. original device with refinements to increase sensitivity and reliability; A telegraph key to operate the transmitter to send short and long pulses, corresponding to the dotsand dashes of Morse code; and A telegraph register activated by the coherer which recorded the received Morse code dots and dashes onto a roll of paper tape. In the summer of 1895, Marconi moved his experimentation outdoors and continued to experiment on his father's estate in Bologna. He tried different arrangements and shapes of antenna but even with improvements he was only able to transmit signals up to onehalf mile, a distance Oliver Lodge had predicted in 1894 as the maximum transmission distance for radio waves. Transmission breakthrough A breakthrough came that summer when Marconi found that much greater range could be achieved after he raised the height of his antenna and, borrowing from a technique used in wired telegraphy, grounding his transmitter and receiver. With these improvements the system was capable of transmitting signals up to 2 miles (3.2 km) and over hills.[22][23] The monopole antenna reduced the frequency of the waves compared to the dipole antennas used by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi 3/18 10/5/2016 Guglielmo Marconi Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Hertz, and radiated vertically polarized radio waves which could travel longer distances. By this point, he concluded that a device could become capable of spanning greater distances, with additional funding and research, and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily. Marconi's experimental apparatus proved to be the first engineeringcomplete, commercially successful radio transmission system.[24][25][26] Marconi wrote to the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, then under the direction of the honorable Pietro Lacava, explaining his wireless telegraph machine and asking for funding. He never received a response to his letter which was eventually dismissed by the Minister who wrote "to the Longara" on the document, referring to the insane asylum on Via della Lungara in Rome.[27] In 1896, Marconi spoke with his family friend Carlo Gardini, Honorary Consul at the United States Consulate in Bologna, about leaving Italy to go to England.