Guglielmo Marconi

Italian scientist and physicist who invented wireless telegraph and radio signal transmission in 1895. In 1902, he discovered the radio magnetic detector. Along with Carl Braun, Marconi was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for physics for their separate, but parallel, development of the wireless.

Marconi’s father, Guiseppe, was a well-known and respected landowner in the district. His mother, Anna Jameson, from an eminent Irish family and her husband’s second wife, nearly died the night that Guglielmo was born. He spent the first three years of his life near Bologne, then three years in England, after which the family went to live in Livorno, Italy. From the time he was a small boy he was extraordinarily interested in physics. In Livorno he attended the first national Technical Institute. In 1892 his mother arranged for him to study physics under the supervision of a professor. Spurred on by the work of Benjamin Franklin, in about 1892 he designed and installed on his house a rooftop mechanism that set off a bell whenever there was an electrical storm nearby. This was the first example of the aerial-to-earth system that later became essential to radio-telegraphy.

After moving to Bologne he often visited the University physics laboratory and attended lectures, reinforcing his urge to experiment. At twenty, while on a summer holiday, he read a detailed description of Hertz’s experiments, inspiring his greatest work. He continued to improve upon others’ earlier designs of tubes between 1894 and 1895. His work was so original that on 7 July 1897 he was issued an Italian patent for "improvements in the transmission of impulses and of the relative apparatus." Marconi applied for patents in all the principal nations of the world.

Eager to develop and apply his work on a large scale, Marconi went to England, accompanied by his mother.