James Baquet

    According to our song, “They All Laughed,” “They told Marconi / Wireless was a phony.”

    Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was an Italian engineer and inventor. He was born in Italy, where his father was a nobleman, but he lived in England from age 2 to 6 (his mother was Irish/Scots), where he learned fluent English.

    Back in Italy, at age 18 he was invited by a neighbor to attend university lectures, but despite a propensity for genius, he was a poor student.

    His area of interest was “wireless telegraphy,” the sending of messages using a series of short and long sounds without using solid wires. This was not a new idea; it had been investigated for over 50 years using various media, including light. But in 1888 a German named Heinrich Hertz had proved the existence of radio waves. While most enthusiasts were studying these in theory, Marconi seems to have been one of the few scientists exploring their practical application.

    With the help of his butler, he began experiments at his villa when he was only 20 years old. Starting with short distances — ringing a bell on the other side of the room, for instance — he did demonstrations for his parents, which gained him their financial support.

    He invented various devices that led to sending signals a half-mile — then the theoretical limit of the reach of radio waves — and, ultimately, achieved the unheard-of distance of two whole miles by raising the antenna and grounding the transmitter and receiver.

    When Marconi reported this breakthrough, the Director of the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs in Italy thought he was insane — although it is not reported whether he “laughed.” So Marconi took his work to England, arriving there with his mother when he was 21, and received the support of the chief electrical engineer of the British Post Office.

    Here he gradually increased the distance of his transmissions, sending signals all the way across the Atlantic Ocean! Once he proved the skeptics wrong, he founded what became the Marconi Company, and his telegraphers were sending signals from the Titanic when it went down.

    He was not the inventor of voice transmission; nevertheless, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for his achievements.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. male household servant

    2. natural ability

    3. sudden, dramatic advancement

    4. people who enjoy doing something

    5. attaching to the earth by wire

    6. device for sending something

    7. unknown, unprecedented