“I now felt for the first time absolutely certain that the day would come when mankind would be able to send messages `round the wires, not only across the Atlantic, but between the furthermost ends of the earth.”
Guglielmo Marconi could certainly justify his statement today. His invention of the wireless telegraph in the late 19th century and important discoveries early this century paved the way for the birth of the mobile-phone industry-an industry that has thrived during the later part of this century and is expected to grow exponentially in 2000 and beyond. Millions of users around the world enjoy wireless devices that meet the human need to communicate anywhere.
As we turn our calendars to the year 2000, RCR salutes the man that made wireless communication possible within the 20th century. Brilliant engineers have since harnessed the power of the airwaves, likely beyond anything Marconi could have dreamed.
Scientists as early as 1820 believed some form of invisible energy traveled through the air. Heinrich Hertz, whose name is used to refer to the unit of frequency of a radio wave we use today, was able to generate high voltage sparks using two metal balls. This was proof that electromagnetic energy traveled the airwaves, but Hertz didn’t think there was a future in what he proved since the energy traveled only a short distance in a laboratory.
The 20-year-old Marconi read Hertz’s and other scientists’ research in 1894 and set out to prove that wireless radio waves did have a future in communications. In a makeshift laboratory set up in his Bologna, Italy, home, Marconi repeated Hertz’s experiments and improved upon them. He progressively increased the distance his wireless telegraph transmitter could send and receive signals, across a room, down the length of a corridor, from the house in the fields and eventually in the summer of 1895, 2 kilometers in a field, despite an intervening hill. His assistant indicated transmission worked by firing a rifle into the air.
Marconi found little support for his new invention in Italy. When he offered up the wireless telegraph to the Italian minister, he declared it unsuitable for telecommunications. Marconi instead traveled to England. His mother, a well-known physicist herself, was part of the Jameson Whiskey manufacturing family in Ireland and appealed to her father for help. Through Marconi’s ties to the British Empire, he was given the chance to present his wireless radio to the English patent board. It granted the patent in 1896, seeing the new invention as a chance to maintain communication with England’s naval fleet.
The British Ministry of Posts gave Marconi money to continue his experiments. A year later, Marconi started the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co., known today as Marconi Electronic Systems Ltd., part of the General Electric Co.
Scientists, including Thomas Edison, still doubted the future of wireless telecommunications, however. By 1899, Marconi had successfully transmitted signals across the English Channel, but no farther. Scientific theory at the time asserted wireless radio waves followed straight lines that would leave the earth’s atmosphere and continue into space.
But Marconi had a hunch. Though unsupported by any scientific proof, he believed the waves would be drawn by gravity and follow the curvature of the earth. He set out to prove his theory in 1901.
He set up an apparatus to communicate across the Atlantic Ocean between Poldhu, Cornwall, on the southwestern tip of England, and St. John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 2,100 miles. If proven to work, the experiment would unleash the use of wireless communications around the world.
An excerpt from the Heritage Post recounted the events that unfolded that day in December:
“The wind howled and icy rain pelted down, as the fragile kite swung desperately in the gale over the Newfoundland cliffs, tugging at its 180-meter wire.” It was midday on Dec. 12, 1901, and Guglielmo Marconi sat anxiously in the small, dark room on Signal Hill.
“`I placed a single ear-phone to my ear and started listening,’ he recounted. `The receiver on the table before me was very crude … (but) I was at last on the point of putting the correctness of all my beliefs to the test.
“Suddenly, there sounded the sharp click of the tapper … and I listened intently. Unmistakably, the three sharp clicks corresponding to three dots sounded in my ear.”
The three dots were Morse code for the letter “S.” Marconi’s feat astounded the world. People could now get news from halfway around the world within a matter of minutes.
Marconi’s other important invention, known as patent 7777, allowed for simultaneous transmission through tuning circuits. This meant that a great number of people could communicate simultaneously using radio signals. Ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship radio transmissions became a booming market almost overnight. By 1910, it became mandatory to install a wireless telegraph on every large ship, with a telegraphist on board.
Marconi received the Nobel Prize in 1909 for his work with radio waves and wireless communications. He continued to improve his devices for the remainder of his life, completing an advancement called the multiple sparks system, which was a new and better way to produce continuous radio waves.
During World War I, Marconi enlisted in the Italian army as an officer, working on developing VHS radios. In the 1920s, he experimented with the use of microwave signals.
Marconi died of a heart attack in Rome on Jan. 20, 1937, at the age of 63. Radio stations around the world observed a two-minute radio silence out of respect for the man who ushered in modern day communications.
