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Fitrah Izul Falaq
On Sunday 3 February 2013
Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, on
April 25, 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman,
and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in the County
Wexford, Ireland. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn.
Even as a boy he took a keen interest in physical and electrical science and
studied the works of Maxwell, Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others. In 1895 he began
laboratory experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio where he
succeeded in sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.
In 1896 Marconi took his apparatus to England where
he was introduced to Mr. (later Sir) William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the
Post Office, and later that year was granted the world's first patent for a
system of wireless telegraphy. He demonstrated his system successfully in
London, on Salisbury Plain and across the Bristol Channel, and in July 1897
formed The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited (in 1900 re-named
Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited). In the same year he gave a
demonstration to the Italian Government at Spezia where wireless signals were
sent over a distance of twelve miles. In 1899 he established wireless
communication between France and England across the English Channel. He erected
permanent wireless stations at The Needles, Isle of Wight, at Bournemouth and
later at the Haven Hotel, Poole, Dorset.
In 1900 he took out his famous patent No. 7777 for
"tuned or syntonic telegraphy" and, on an historic day in December
1901, determined to prove that wireless waves were not affected by the
curvature of the Earth, he used his system for transmitting the first wireless
signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's,
Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles.
Between 1902 and 1912 he patented several new
inventions. In 1902, during a voyage in the American liner
"Philadelphia", he first demonstrated "daylight effect"
relative to wireless communication and in the same year patented his magnetic
detector which then became the standard wireless receiver for many years. In
December 1902 he transmitted the first complete messages to Poldhu from
stations at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and later Cape Cod, Massachusetts, these
early tests culminating in 1907 in the opening of the first transatlantic
commercial service between Glace Bay and Clifden, Ireland, after the first
shorter-distance public service of wireless telegraphy had been established
between Bari in Italy and Avidari in Montenegro. In 1905 he patented his
horizontal directional aerial and in 1912 a "timed spark" system for
generating continuous waves.
In 1914 he was commissioned in the Italian Army as a
Lieutenant being later promoted to Captain, and in 1916 transferred to the Navy
in the rank of Commander. He was a member of the Italian Government mission to
the United States in 1917 and in 1919 was appointed Italian plenipotentiary
delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. He was awarded the Italian Military
Medal in 1919 in recognition of his war service.
During his war service in Italy he returned to his
investigation of short waves, which he had used in his first experiments. After
further tests by his collaborators in England, an intensive series of trials
was conducted in 1923 between experimental installations at the Poldhu Station
and in Marconi's yacht "Elettra" cruising in the Atlantic and
Mediterranean, and this led to the establishment of the beam system for long
distance communication. Proposals to use this system as a means of Imperial
communications were accepted by the British Government and the first beam
station, linking England and Canada, was opened in 1926, other stations being
added the following year.
In 1931 Marconi began research into the propagation
characteristics of still shorter waves, resulting in the opening in 1932 of the
world's first microwave radiotelephone link between the Vatican City and the
Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Two years later at Sestri Levante
he demonstrated his microwave radio beacon for ship navigation and in 1935,
again in Italy, gave a practical demonstration of the principles of radar, the
coming of which he had first foretold in a lecture to the American Institute of
Radio Engineers in New York in 1922.
He has been the recipient of honorary doctorates of
several universities and many other international honours and awards, among them
the Nobel Prize for Physics, which in 1909 he shared with Professor Karl Braun,
the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, the John Fritz Medal and the
Kelvin Medal. He was decorated by the Tsar of Russia with the Order of St.
Anne, the King of Italy created him Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and
St. Lazarus, and awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy
in 1902. Marconi also received the freedom of the City of Rome (1903), and was
created Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy in 1905. Many other distinctions
of this kind followed. In 1914 he was both created a Senatore in the Italian
Senate and app ointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
in England. He received the hereditary title of Marchese in 1929.
In 1905 he married the Hon. Beatrice O'Brien,
daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin, the marriage being annulled in 1927, in
which year he married the Countess Bezzi-Scali of Rome. He had one son and two
daughters by his first and one daughter by his second wife. His recreations
were hunting, cycling and motoring.
Marconi died in Rome on July 20, 1937.