Science Saturday-Guglielmo Marconi Radio Pioneer.

In this Science Saturday story Charlie Keeble tells the story of how an Essex laboratory developed the radio equipment to communicate with the world, just as our website can do through the internet today. Here we have a non-Essex born resident who came from Italy and made Chelmsford the birthplace of radio.

Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna in April 1874 to an aristocratic landowning family. He was homeschooled as a child by private tutors and never went onto a formal higher education. He read actively about chemistry, mathematics and physics and this inspired his calling to become a scientist. At age 18 he met with a physicist from the University of Bologna called Augusto Righi who introduced Marconi to the research work of German physicist Heinrich Hertz.

In 1888 Hertz had discovered the presence of electromagnetic waves around the Earth in the air. This was done to prove a theory of electromagnetic radiation proposed by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell. The theory is that electromagnetic radiation travelled through space and air as waves. Maxwell believed that light consisted of electromagnetic waves of short wavelength and that they travelled intertwined with light. Hertz proved the existence of electromagnetic waves by detecting them using electromagnetic induction.

Electromagnetic induction works by using two wires electrically charged by an electrical transformer known as an induction coil. The two wires are separated by a gap between them to allow for a spark to appear and this is called the spark gap. When a high voltage is applied to the induction coil it produces a spark across the spark gap creating a standing wave of radio frequency current in the wires, which produces radio waves. 

Now Hertz did prove the existence of radio waves doing this, but when asked what practical use they had he said “Nothing, I guess”. Marconi believed he was wrong and that radio waves did have some practical purpose. Augusto Righi showed Marconi an article he wrote in which a British physicist called Oliver Hodge demonstrated that radio waves could be transmitted and detected. All Marconi had to do was to find a way that the radio waves could be applied in a practical way through technology. 

In 1894 at the age of 20, Guglielmo Marconi made himself the first practical radio engineer by experimenting with self made equipment in the attic of his own home. He made a wireless doorbell that could be used in the family home, which is now a common shop bought gadget. A year later he built the first practical long range wireless telegraph system able to transmit messages using telegraph poles and manipulated the shape and direction of the radio waves. 

Over the next few years Marconi started making functional wireless telegraph equipment and components. In 1896 he moved to Britain and started demonstrating to the public how his Marconi wireless telegraph systems could be used to transmit Morse code messages over great distances. 

In 1897 Guglielmo Marconi was granted a patent for his radio and wireless technology and later that year he set up the Marconi Research Company in Great Baddow, in Chelmsford. From here it became the birthplace of modern radio technology. His team developed many components that would become essential for the advancement of telecommunications.Including the setup for the first Transatlantic radio broadcast from Nova Scotia, Canada to Clifden, Ireland in 1907.

From Chelmsford followed several other firsts in wireless telegraph communications that were then tried out in several other locations. The first transmission across the English Channel was made in March 1899, and in November that year in the United States the first radio transmission from a ship was made. On board the ship SS Ponce was the news coverage of the America’s Cup yacht race from New Jersey, where the first sports radio coverage was made across the East Coast. 

Later ships carrying wireless transmission and receiver equipment would become commonplace. It famously served the Titanic when it sank in 1912 and called for help with the code signal SOS (save our souls). Guglielmo Marconi even capitalised on this significant use of his radio and wireless equipment and he quickly gained worldwide fame. The British Postmaster-General at that time praised Marconi for his accomplishments. He was quoted referring to the Titanic disaster: “Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi…and his marvellous invention.”

From this tragic story followed many more advances in the Chelmsford factory. But to drive expansion Marconi needed to build a better factory here, so he set up the New Street Works in 1912 from which they started making wireless equipment more efficient for radio broadcasting stations. This was achieved using continuous waves that allowed for constant amplitudes and frequencies so that radio stations could operate on a set frequency. This led to the creation of the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1922, which is still around today as Britain’s state broadcaster the BBC.

In 1914 Guglielmo Marconi had returned to his native Italy and became a state senator in the Kingdom of Italy. That same year he had been made an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in Britain. Later that year World War 1 broke out and Italy was on the Allied side with Marconi in charge of the Italian military’s radio service. 

Later in 1924 Marconi helped set up the first Italian statebroadcaster called Unione Radiofonica Italia. That company is still broadcasting today as RAI. His Chelmsford company continued to develop new technology in radio and broadcasting such as television equipment and avionics for airplanes. Later during the war it also became the birthplace of radar. It’s also worth noting that Marconi received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun for their work in radio communications. 

Guglielmo Marconi died in Rome in July 1937 from a heart attack at the age of 63. His achievements in radio technology were paramount and huge to the world including Italy that he was given a state funeral. His remains are housed in the Mausoleum of Guglielmo Marconi in the grounds of Villa Griffone in his native Bologna.