1895: MARCONI'S INVENTION

(born 4/25/1874 d. 7/20/1937)

The radio was born to the sound of a rifle shot. By September 1895, Guglielmo Marconi, a self-taught 21-year-old from Bologna , had already performed simple experiments which had convinced him that it was possible to send signals by using electro magnetic waves to connect a transmiltin, and a receiving antenna.

At first, the distances were short; the one hundred meters between his house and the end of the garden; but it then became necessary to demonstrate that, by using the ether, transmission was also possible between two points separated by an obstacle. Scientists and other experts held that electromagnetic waves could only be transmitted in a straight line and then only if there was nothing in the way.

Above all, they thought that the main obstacle was the curvature of the earth's surface. Marconi, (like every self-taught man) was more interested in practice than theory, and so he placed his transmitter near his house and the receiver three kilometres away, behind a hill. Overseeing it, there was the Marconi's servant, Mignani, whose only duty consisted in firing a rifle shot when the signal was received. When Mignani fired his gun, for the first time in history the three dots of the letter "S" of the Morse alphabet had traveled through space.

   

First Marconi's radiotrasmitter used in Villa Grifone, Bologna

Samuel Morse (R/A), telegraphed "What Hath God Wrought!" (NPR) in 1844 in Morse Code. Marconi blew everyone away on September 30th, 1899 with a revolutionary concept...wireless! On December 12, 1901, he transmitted the Morse code letter "s" across the Atlantic from Cornwall, England, to St. John's, Newfoundland


The Guglielmo Marconi Foundation, U.S.A., Inc., 
was founded in 1995 to promulgate the name of Marconi, "Father of Wireless", who one hundred years before, demonstrated the transmission and reception of Hertzian waves as a new medium of communication.

United States National Marconi Museum

and the museum's official site 

for World honors given to Guglielmo Marcon

In 1907, commercial wireless service across the Atlantic began. The station at Cape Breton, Novia Scotia is shown here on opening day.

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