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Marconi - the early
years
A bit of a
rebel was Guglielmo Marconi! Born of an Irish mother and an
Italian father, he inherited the independent mind of the
former and the flair of the latter. He took an interest in
mathematics and physics at an early age studying
electromagnetic wave technology and set up a laboratory at his
father's estate in Bologna, Italy where he worked upon ways
and means of increasing the potential range of radio waves
using various devices such as parabolic reflectors to
concentrate the beams in one direction, and different types of
aerial systems. All the experts in Italy told him he was crazy
to waste his time on such an obviously useless technology so
he went off to London where the scientists were more open
minded and was soon using kites and balloons to give extra
height to his aerials, and he found that he was able to
transmit signals over several miles. Assisted by Sir William
Preece, the chief engineer of the GPO, he lectured and gave
demonstrations to the scientific community and was soon well
known both in Britain and abroad. However, even though he was
able to communicate with a warship more than 10 miles away
from a transmitting station in Italy scientists in his own
country still remained convinced that there was no future use
for this technology whatsoever but as many an innovator has
shown in the past the fact that one's peers poured scorn on an
idea doesn't mean that the idea has no merit so he ploughed on
and in 1899 he set up a transmitting station in Britain which
was able to send and receive messages to and from France and
it was not long before warships were carrying this technology
and communicating between each other; as usual science was
being driven by military concerns! It was not long before his
fame reached America, and after demonstrating how messages
could be sent from ships at sea to the USA The American
Marconi Company was set up specifically for this purpose.
One problem
that bothered scientists however was the fact that the Earth
is of course round and as everyone knew radio waves travel in
a straight line so it was assumed that the range of
transmission was finite. However, Marconi squashed this idea
by transmitting signals from Cornwall all the way across the
Atlantic Ocean to St John's in Newfoundland so the genie was
now out of the bottle; there was a huge increase in
broadcasting worldwide and before the end of the First World
War in 1918 he demonstrated that it was possible to send
messages all the way from the United Kingdom to Australia.
During the war however a major problem with radio
transmissions became apparent; it was just as easy for enemies
to pick up messages as allies so experiments were carried out
to find ways of sending the radio beams in precise directions
over long distances, rather than transmitting to every
direction simultaneously and Marconi found that by reducing
the wavelength he was able to use his system of concentrating
beams by means of reflecting devices around the aerials to
send messages over extremely long distances; a system that we
all recognized nowadays as the accepted way of transmitting
shortwave radio from fixed aerials to fixed receivers a very
considerable distance away. Marconi was given a contract for
running the whole radio communications network between Britain
and its empire; the modern communications age had begun.
Copyright John
Bennett 2005 All Rights Reserved
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