HALL OF FAME / inventor profile

Guglielmo Marconi
Born Apr 25 1874 - Died Jul 20 1937

Transmitting Electrical Signals
Radio
Patent Number(s) 586,193

Inducted 1975


In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi built the equipment and transmitted electrical signals through the air from one end of his house to the other, and then from the house to the garden. These experiments were, in effect, the dawn of practical wireless telegraphy or radio.

Following the successes of his experiments at home, Marconi became obsessed with the idea of sending messages across the Atlantic. He built a transmitter, 100 times more powerful than any previous station, at Poldhu, on the southwest tip of England, and in November 1901 installed a receiving station at St. John's Newfoundland.

On December 12, 1901, he received signals from across the ocean. News of this achievement spread around the world, and he was acclaimed by outstanding scientists, including Thomas A. Edison.

Invention Impact

Marconi’s radio was the first to demonstrate workable wireless radio communication.  It would not be until Lee De Forest invented the audion vacuum tube for amplification in the early 1900s that audio was used in conjunction with the radio.  Marconi’s work consisted of slashes and dots like the Morse code, and government navies used the new wireless radio at first.  The earliest users included the Japanese Navy scouting the Russian Navy during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and on board the Titanic in 1912 to communicate with rescue ships in the North Atlantic. 

Inventor Bio

Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy.His father was Italian, his mother, Irish. He was educated first in Bologna and later in Florence. Then he went to the technical school in Leghorn, where he studied physics.

Marconi received many honors including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. He was sent as a delegate to the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919, in which capacity he signed the peace treaties with Austria and Bulgaria.


© 2002 National Inventors Hall of Fame