1896: Radio - The book of science

Radio
Transoceanic
Beyond proof of concept
Commentary

Radio

Inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, Guglielmo Marconi
(pronounce his first name with a hard G, gee-YELL-moe),
invented radio.
Well, he didn’t invent it out of whole cloth.
*
In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell predicted
electromagnetic waves could travel over a distance
at the speed of light.
In 1885, Thomas Edison filed a patent application
for transmitting signals between distant points,
using an “etheric force,” which he didn’t know were radio waves.
In 1879, David Edward Hughes invented a spark-gap transmitter
was able to pick up Morse-code signals up to five hundred yards
using his carbon microphone and a telephone receiver,
but his work was dismissed as merely induction.
In 1887, Heinrich Hertz analyzed radio waves in the lab
using a spark-gap transmitter and a half-wave dipole antenna,
but Hertz did not consider this to be of any practical value.
When Hertz’s results were published,
David Hughes gave up his experiments.
*
As a young man, Marconi built his own equipment
and experimented in his attic
with the help of his butler, Mignani.
Marconi improved the coherer receiver,
increased the lengths of his antennas,
oriented the antennas vertically,
and let the transmitter antenna touch the ground,
so that eventually he could transmit and receive
miles beyond the line of sight.

Transoceanic

Marconi couldn’t get support in Italy
so he moved to London.
His first radio transmission over the sea
crossed the English Channel in 1897.
In December 1901, Marconi claimed
that a signal transmitted from Poldhu, Cornwall,
was received in Saint John’s, Newfoundland,
using a five-hundred-foot antenna born aloft by a kite.
Although this might have been impossible,
Marconi was soon able to prove
that the station at Poldhu could transmit to a ship
two thousand miles across the Atlantic.

Beyond proof of concept

One way to establish
a thing might be done
and with how much effort
is to do it.
Some I’ve known did
not like to propose
to do anything unless
they had already done it.

The Marconi company bought Edison’s patent, “Means for Transmitting Signals Electrically,” No. 465,971, to help indemnify themselves against the patent war that cast its shadow over them as World War II approached. Marconi did not make it easier when he joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923 and served Benito Mussolini on the Fascist Grand Council.