Marconi, Guglielmo (1874–1937)

A photograph of the Italian wireless pioneer Guglielmo Marconi beside the telegraph on board his yacht Elettra in the early 1930s. While sailing, Marconi experimented with sending and receiving radio messages.

A plaque commemorating the work of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) at the Poldhu Wireless Station, near Lizard Point in Cornwall. Lizard Point is the most southerly point on mainland Britain.

The bungalow at Lizard Point in Cornwall where the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) lived around 1900. Just along the coast is the site of the Poldhu Wireless Station from where, on 12 December 1901, Marconi transmitted the first radio signal, a letter ‘S,’ across the Atlantic to St John's in Nova Scotia.

The Italian pioneer of radio telegraphy Guglielmo Marconi, speaking from his 700-ton yacht, Elettra in Genoa, Italy, to an audience in Sydney, Australia. The yacht, purchased in 1919, was converted into a floating laboratory where he tested short-wave reception and transmission. By the end of the 1920s he had set up a worldwide system of short-wave stations.

Italian electrical engineer and pioneer in the invention and development of radio. In 1895 he achieved radio communication over more than a mile, and in England in 1896 he conducted successful experiments that led to the formation of the company that became Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Ltd. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 for the development of wireless telegraphy.

After reading about radio waves, Marconi built a device to transmit these electromagnetic waves and receive them as electrical signals. He then tried to transmit and receive radio waves over increasing distances. In 1898 he successfully transmitted signals across the English Channel, and in 1901 established communication with St John's, Newfoundland, from Poldhu in Cornwall, and in 1918 with Australia.

Marconi was born in Bologna. He studied under a number of Italian professors but never enrolled for a university course.

Having obtained a patent in 1896 for wireless telegraphy, he enabled Queen Victoria to send a message to the Prince of Wales aboard the royal yacht, and by 1897 he had established a commercial enterprise in London. From 1921 he lived aboard his yacht Elettra, which served as a home, laboratory, and receiving station.

Marconi based his apparatus on that used by German physicist Heinrich Hertz, but used a coherer to detect the waves. (The coherer was invented by Edouard Branly in France and was designed to convert the radio waves into electric current.) Marconi improved Hertz's design by earthing the transmitter and receiver, and found that an insulated aerial enabled him to increase the distance of transmission.

Marconi's later inventions included the magnetic detector in 1902, horizontal direction telegraphy in 1905, and the continuous wave system in 1912. During World War I he worked on the development of very short wavelength beams.