12 December 1901: Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transoceanic radio signal !

12 December 1901: Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transoceanic radio signal !

The invention of the radio is among those that have changed the history of humanity. The authorship of the instrument goes to Guglielmo Marconi, a Bolognese physicist of a noble family who, after years of experiments relating to the transmission of signals, arrives at developing a completely new communication system.

12 December: Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transoceanic radio signal

Marconi, born in 1874, carries out most of his activities in England and Ireland because his mother is Irish and his father, despite being Italian, decides to take British citizenship, so even the future creator of the radio can, at any time, become English citizen.

Marconi makes the first working radio at the end of 1895 and in the following years he makes numerous public demonstrations of his creature. One of the most clamorous is certainly that of 12 December 1901, when it sends a signal from one shore to the other of the Atlantic Ocean .... and this memorial enterprise was NOT made by the genius of Tesla or the Russian Popov, but precisely from Marconi!


A little over a month earlier, in fact, the inventor had installed a transmitter in Cornwall, in the Poldhu area, and had then left for John's on the island of Terranova. And it is from Canada that Marconi transmits to the antenna installed in England the three points that in the Morse code indicate the letter S.

In the following years Marconi continues with his experiments, aiming to obtain a transoceanic communication system that is actually reliable. One of the first occasions when radio signals reveal their enormous usefulness is the sinking of the transatlantic Republic, at the beginning of 1909: the 1,700 travelers are rescued thanks to the possibility of launching an SOS via radio. In that same year Marconi obtained the Nobel Prize for Physics (also not from Tesla!). The inventor died in Rome, in July 1937, following a heart attack.

73 of IW2BSF - Rudy

 

Yes Marconi was an amazing Man .... producing an amazing system of communication which can cross our Solar System .....

 

And here I thot Glen did it--

TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo

 

No. But he's the one who told Marconi how to ground his feedline.

 

It was really Al Gore who invented radio, ... when he was very young...
Tom WA4ILH

 

My grandfather knew Marconi when he lived in Italy. He told me stories about Marconi and that people thought he was talking to the devil. So much so that parents refused to allow their children to walk by his residence.

 

Well...almost. Marconi used a slew of patents from Oliver Lodge, which the Marconi Company bought. Marconi did an excellent job in synthesizing many inventions and made the first practical system that worked great distances.

What is less known is that Marconi 'wireless' was considered inferior to cable transmissions because it was intermittent and unreliable. Ships did become the first real 'app'--no cable possible. Later, broadcast made Marconi what we think of today. Wireless became 'radio'.

 

When told of Marconi's achievement, Tesla responded "Thats OK. He is using 7 of my patents"

 

I read about him and this achievement back in 6th grade, what an inspiring thing for a boy to read!!

 

This must remind many Hams of their first Transatlantic contact. It certainly does for me.

I have visited Poldhu as it was not far from a spot where I first learned to Surf. The Ocean was
a lot colder than here
G3SEA/KH6

 

Marconi was more of an entrepreneur and systems integrator than actual inventor.
He was one of the first to realise the huge potential of wireless communications and managed to find really clever people, both scientists and engineers, to design and build his systems.

It is for the massive commercial development of "wireless" that Marconi will be best remembered.
He also strived for a monopoly in radio communications, which spurred several other
actors to initiate original research to find out new solutions that did not have Marconi's patent rights connected to them.

73/
Karl-Arne
SM0AOM

 

Unfortunately Marconi's reception in 1901 was all in his imagination.
He used a frequency around 800 kHz in the medium wave band during the day when absorption from the d layer is highest.
He also had a broad band transmitter and an untuned receiver with no amplification and no selectivity.
It wasn't a blind test, he was looking for 3 clicks representing the letter S, undoubtedly he heard some static instead.
Jack Belrose presented a paper at an IEEE meeting that outlines all of this:
https://www.ieee.ca/millennium/radio/radio_differences.html

 

Yes, he was a righteous dude.

 

Unfortunately, by the time of his death in 1937. Marconi still couldn't check in to the WARFA net. His dying words were "You can check in but you can't check in... That's not ham radio".

 

EI100YXQ Centenary of First East to West Voice Transmission between EI and Cape Breton, NS