The Prize:
The 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Guglielmo Marconi and Ferdinand Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.”
The Science:
In today’s increasingly connected world, it’s hard to imagine a time when worldwide communication required serious effort. Some visionaries could imagine a future where near-instantaneous communication was possible, but for most of the world it was only a pipe dream.
One of those visionaries was Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi was born to a life of privilege: his father was a wealthy Italian land owner and his mother was an heiress to the Jameson Whiskey fortune. As a child, Marconi was interested in physics and math, and had an early start in communications science; at 21 at his father’s estate in Italy, he managed to send wireless telegraphy signals over two kilometres. His work was inspired by Heinrich Hertz, who discovered wireless waves, James Clerk Maxwell, who first described electromagnetic waves, Oliver Lodge, a professor at Oxford University, and Augustus Righi, a physics professor at Bologna University and close family friend.
In 1896, Marconi and his mother moved from Italy to London where Marconi set up shop. Within a few months, he submitted his first patent on wireless transmission using Hertzian waves. Almost instantly, Marconi became a celebrity and had the support of the public, the British and Italian Navies, the British General Post Office, and Queen Victoria. The public was enchanted by the idea of coded messages travelling through the air (what we call radio waves today) rather than through wires like traditional telegrams.
His growing celebrity and moniker as the “inventor of wireless” was not well received by Oliver Lodge. A few years before Marconi’s two-kilometre feat, Lodge had shown that his technology could transmit a wireless Morse code message 150 metres. However, Lodge did not grasp the commercial applications of his discovery, whereas Marconi immediately saw the potential in wireless telegraphy and exploited it.
The growth of Marconi’s new company rested on its ability to expand transmission distance and on high-profile message transmissions that captured the public’s interest. In one famous example, a snowstorm had blown down “wired” communication between a hotel where a prominent British statesman lay dying and the British press in London. Marconi’s wireless telegraphy saved the day by transmitting the information wirelessly across the country to Fleet Street.
Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company took on its greatest challenge in 1901. Marconi believed that he and his technology could bridge the Atlantic Ocean wirelessly. Skeptics thought that the curvature of the earth over a distance as wide as the Atlantic Ocean would prevent wireless transmission. They were wrong. In 1901, Marconi landed in Newfoundland and within a month was able to receive a weak Morse code message sent from Cornwall, England at Signal Hill, Newfoundland. By 1902, permanent stations were set up at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and at Cape Cod, Maine to facilitate both ship-to-land and trans-Atlantic wireless telegraphy.
The Significance:
Soon after the establishment of permanent wireless telegraphy stations in both the New and Old World, every large ship crossing the Atlantic required a wireless telegraphy machine on board. Two Marconi Company employees aboard the SS Titantic sent out distress calls—saving 700 people—after the ship hit the infamous iceberg. The British Postmaster-General said that “those who have been saved have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi and his wonderful invention.”
Wireless telegraphy, or radio as we now know it, was very important across the Atlantic during the First World War. German Forces cut the “wired” telegraph cables making the Allied Forces almost completely dependent on radio communication.
Of course, the applications of wireless communication do not end at distress calls and news bulletins. In 1920, one of the first public wireless broadcasts of a singing Dame Nellie Melba was transmitted from Marconi’s Chelmsford factory. It started a home entertainment revolution. Marconi, his competitors, and the British government teamed up to create the British Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast news and entertainment within the home. Marconi’s company aimed at putting a wireless broadcast receiver (a radio) in every living room, and very nearly did. In the U.S., Marconi founded what is now known as RCA.
Controversy surrounding Marconi’s numerous patent claims swirled for decades after his company’s establishment. Marconi did admit that he had used some of Ferdinand Braun’s patented technology to build his own wireless telegraphs. It is with Ferdinand Braun that he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize. Other patent disputes were voiced by Nikola Tesla and Oliver Lodge, and as a result, many of the Marconi Company patents were eventually overturned.
When Guglielmo Marconi died in Rome 1937, the world’s radio stations observed a two-minute moment of silence to honour the man who had the foresight and the drive to change the way the world stayed connected.
