Who Invented the Radio?

Gugliemo Marconi

(1874-1937)

Gugliemo Marconi lived on his father’s estate northern Italy. He didn’t have many friends. His mother taught him music, religion, and English. Marconi loved to read in the huge family library. He was amazed by electricity. In his teenage years he would experiment for hours in his attic laboratory. Most of his experiments ended with a failure but he would always rethink it and try again. One summer day he was reading the life story of Heinrich Hertz, who had experimented with electromagnetic waves. He thought of an idea of wireless communication. He worked very hard. Finally by the spring of 1895 he was ready to test his invention. By the summer his signals were reaching hundreds of yards. Once he put one of his transmitters on the ground and another in a tree. Immediately he received signals. In a short time he was receiving signals from two miles away. Then he took one transmitter and his brother took another. They spread out, one on each side of the estate. They received signals even with trees and hills in the path. In early 1896 Marconi revealed his wireless system to the world. He offered a system to the Italian government but they gave him a negative reply. He was upset. Marconi and his mother went to London soon after that. He got a job as a repairer of equipment that had been damaged by customs agents. They had insisted on taking the devices apart. Marconi thought that other inventors would steal his ideas so he got a patent on his invention. By July of that year, Marconi was ready to start demonstrating his system. He first demonstrated his system to William Preece, the engineer-in-cheif of the British postal system. He listened and became an ally to Marconi. Since William Preece liked his invention so much he arranged for Marconi to show his invention to some of the most famous scientists in England. Some of them were still doubtful about him so Marconi kept increasing the distance that his signals traveled. In the spring of 1897 his signals reached a distance of 8 1/2 miles. This made his system very popular. He started to get offers to buy his system, but Marconi would not sell his product. He formed his own company instead. He sold shares to investors but he kept the majority. His company would make him a very wealthy man later in his life. He started building larger transmitters to travel farther distances and he built radio stations on the coast of England to warn ships of dangerous waters. His stations saved many lives and he felt proud of that. His success wasn’t always good. Sometimes it brought problems. Sometimes the signals were picked up by other transmitters. So Marconi made new system where people could tune it to other frequencies or stations. This reduced the chance of interfering signals. Marconi was becoming a very famous man with his new and improved systems. He could send wireless reports. In 1899 he sent a message across the English Channel, a total distance of 32 miles. He still wanted to reach farther. His goal was to send wireless signals all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. One afternoon in December Marconi triumphed. That achievement would open an era for awesome advances in radio.

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