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Signor Marconi's Magic Box 144

Posted by timothy from the marconis-pizza-radio-dispatched dept.
JChris (J. Chris Coppick) writes "Wireless technologies threatening cable monopolies; an underground network of amateurs fighting regulation; legal battles over patent rights; phone owners complaining about telemarketers; car enthusiasts complaining about speed traps ... This may sound like a summary of today's headlines, but these and other familiar conflicts were hot even at the beginning of the 1900s. In Signor Marconi's Magic Box, Gavin Weightman tells the story of the life of Guglielmo Marconi, and of the communications revolution sparked by Marconi and others around the turn of the 20th century." Read on for the rest of Coppick's review.
Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century & the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution
author Gavin Weightman
pages 291
publisher Da Capo Press
rating 7
reviewer J. Chris Coppick
ISBN 0306812754
summary Fascinating science-related historical narrative

This biography of Marconi, published by Da Capo Press in 2003, is just one in a group of science-related historical accounts that I've been working my way through of late, but stands out from the others in sheer deja vu. Before getting into that, though, let us focus first on the author's deftly accomplished goal of fitting the story of Marconi's life and the development of wireless telegraphy (along with a more than adequate treatment of the historical context) into a book of approximately 300 pages (including two small sections of well-annotated photographs).

For those not familiar with Marconi beyond his popular title as the inventor of the radio, one of the first surprises is that much of the story takes place in England and not Italy, due in no small part to the fact that Marconi's mother was Irish. Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1874. He was raised there, and it was in Bologna that he laid the foundation for his future successes in the wireless business. While the existence of "Hertzian" waves was known before Marconi's work, and even though their use as a medium of communication was certainly being considered by others at the time, Marconi can be credited with key innovations that led to the first practical system of wireless telegraphy. In 1896 he traveled to England to popularize his wireless system, with the help of his mother's family connections. Thus it was England where Marconi launched his first wireless enterprise, and England remained his base of operations for the bulk of his career.

For those not familiar with the history of radio, another surprise may be how just many obstacles initially stood in the way of wireless communication. The BBC World News broadcast didn't start the day after Marconi said, "Aha!" Many of the problems stemmed from a general ignorance of the actual physics involved in radio transmission. For example, early wireless sets worked better during the night than the day (like your radio's AM tuner), and early long-distance transmitters required large amounts of power. The advantages of "short waves," much less the theoretical underpinnings, were not recognized until rather late in the story, relative to Marconi. Marconi himself had little understanding of why his "magic boxes" worked. He focused rather on mechanical innovations that increased the convenience and reliability, and therefore the commercial possibilities, of his previous successes. In this respect, Marconi was much more of a craftsman and businessman than a scientist.

By 1900 there were two companies bearing Marconi's name (the Marconi Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, and the Marconi International Marine Company), though like the true startups they were, neither were making any money. Soon Marconi was almost completely focused on making trans-Atlantic wireless telegraphy a reality. It was near this point in the narrative that I started to see reflections of "modern" legal, political, and cultural themes.

For the curious, let's dispense with these first: Marconi was an "early adopter" of the then-recent advances in automobile technology (he was seriously injured in an automobile accident later in his life). So the book makes mention of the fact that, because of the rapid rise in the popularity of motoring, as early as 1904 the police in England were setting up "speed traps." So the next time you are yelling at the cop who just pulled you over, take a moment to consider your small but vital role in over 100 years of tradition. Also of interest, the book discusses the roots of the "broadcast" concept, some of which involved the telephone system. This leads to the mention of consumer complaints, dating back to the early 1900s, about unsolicited sales calls. I won't ask you to consider, the next time your dinner is interrupted, your small but vital role in that tradition. It's just too depressing.

In December of 1901, Marconi received in Newfoundland the first trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph signal, transmitted from one of his stations in England. At that time, the business of trans-Atlantic communications (i.e. telegraph messages) was monopolized by the small set of companies that owned undersea cables. One cable company even had a legally-defined monopoly on telegraphy in Newfoundland, a fact they quickly pointed out to Marconi, forcing him to take his business to Canada. [ed. note: Newfoundland didn't join Canada until 1949.]

As news of Marconi's accomplishment spread, cable-company stocks began to "wobble." It was assumed by many that once long-distance wireless telegraphy became widespread, the lower cost-per-message for wireless would put the cable companies out of business. Of course, that never really happened. (It's worth noting here that the revolution of radio broadcast came later. Just as no one looking at the ARPANET could see Slashdot, no one looking at the first wireless efforts could see Wolfman Jack, Howard Stern, or Rush Limbaugh.) Soon however, despite the lack of much actual commercial wireless success, "wireless mania" was spreading through parts of the world, especially in the United States. Fraudulent businesses were created, patents (legitimate and otherwise) were being granted, competing standards were leading to international political frictions, patent-infringement suits were being brought, competitors were being bought out, and amateurs were gleefully "hacking" the system. It wasn't long before government regulations were being imposed and bureaucracy was slowing down the adoption of new technologies. Hopefully you can see why all this started to feel more than just vaguely familiar. I do not want to leave anyone with the impression that Signor Marconi's Magic Box is just a depressing litany of the recurring problems of civilization. It's hardly that. Actually the fact that I was able to identify on a modern level with much of the history made an already interesting book even more interesting.

Signor Marconi's Magic Box is pretty much everything you could want in a historical biography, perhaps more. The author touches on enough aspects of the development of wireless telegraphy to keep the story fresh, including most if not all of the personalities involved, and he seems to give credit where it's due. He provides enough detail of Marconi's life to give us a good sense of the man, but not so much as to weigh down the narrative. Likewise, he provides enough technical detail to give us a sense of the technology, but not so much as to detract from the human aspects of the tale. If you are not hooked yet, please allow me brief mention of some other aspects of the story, including: forbidden love, intrigue, war, murder, shipwrecks, practical jokes, heroic deeds, another war, and international espionage. If I had to sum it all up in one sentence it would be this: Any book that contains the phrase "two-ton transformer blew up" can't be all bad.

You can purchase Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century & the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Signor Marconi's Magic Box More

Signor Marconi's Magic Box

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  • The telegraph itself, ditto (Score:5, Informative)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:46PM (#8718340)
    Anyone interested in this will also like The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage, Walker and Company NY, ISBN 0802713424. It's a slim volume about the wired telegraph, with fascinating parallels to the internet's early years. Here is the Books-A-Million link [booksamillion.com].
    • Unfortunately history doesn't repeat itself EXACTLY. So the similarities are parallel at best.

      • Re:The telegraph itself, ditto (Score:5, Informative)

        by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:20PM (#8718707) Homepage Journal
        Unfortunately history doesn't repeat itself EXACTLY. So the similarities are parallel at best.

        even if history did repeat itself exactly, it wouldn't matter because we only choose to remember a small part of it.

        witness reginald fesseden. while marconi gets the lion's share of history credit, no one remembers that it was fesseden who first transmitted voice signals - making him the inventor of "radio" in the common sense - and that he was the inventor of sonar. heck, fessenedn's voice transmission experiments happend almost a year before marconi's morse-only newfoundland stunt.

        fessenden was also a major contributor to the improvement of the lightbulb (which was invented by two people called henry woodward [wikipedia.org], mathew evans [wikipedia.org]... not this edison guy).

        so, please, for the sake of actually learning from history, look up fessenden [wikipedia.org].

        • Actually Fesseden (sic) receives quite a bit of coverage in "Signor Marconi's Magic Box," along with quite a few other contributors. For the sake of expediency though, I condensed most of that part into the phrase "he seems to give credit where it's due." :-)

        • Bose demonstrated radio signalling in 1895 almost 2 years before Marconi did in 1897 and cross-Atlantic in 1901 (both times using a detector designed by Bose). Prof. J.C. Bose did not want to commercialize his invention and published his work for others to copy / improve upon.

          Reference at U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory [nrao.edu] Apparently IEEE also recognized Bose's contribution to Radio. Maybe a someone with access to IEEE material (Google has not helped me) can substantiate this.

    • Re:Early Hackers (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pkalkul ( 450979 )
      An even more appropriate companion to this book would be Susan Douglas' Inventing American Broadcasting. It has a fascinating chapter on amateur radio operators that reads like a pre-history of computer hackers. She describes how these operators -- young, adolescent, middle-class boys obsessed with a technology for technology's sake -- provided a critical mass for broadcast radio (which had a chicken-and-egg problem -- without an established base of users no-one wanted to develop broadcast stations). The
  • 1900s

    at the beginning of the 20th century.

    • Re:I believe you mean (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, the title means exactly what it says. Wireless telegraphy became popularized in the "at the beginning of the 1900s," but it was "invented" in the 1800s, thus it was an "Invention of the 19th Century."

  • even then spam was a problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:46PM (#8718351)


    Man: Western Union, telegram for you, Miss.

    Lady: Ah, I hope this is from my brother Charles, he's been out west working in the silent film business know! (opens telegram)
    -=# MAKE MONEY FAST! #=- Tired of working 120 hours a week shoveling coal? Want to make 8-dollars-50 a week without having to leave your chamber pot? . .

  • Tesla Invented Radio, not marconi (Score:5, Informative)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:47PM (#8718353) Homepage Journal
    Subject says it all... Telsa was first.

    Should be called 'Telsa's magic box' *HE* deserves the credit.
    • We unfortunately couldn't give the credit of the radio to someone who has the phobia of round things.
    • And I have read of controversy even with what Marconi did, apparently he used someone else's wizardry and claimed it as his own. However, he did publicize it, or market as we say nowadays, which neither Tesla (you need to watch your spelling, you got it right once out of three tries) nor the other forgotten nobody did. Whether that actually spread its use much faster is another question too.
      • Man i need to slow down and start proof reading..

        I agree, that Tesla didnt have a clue how to market his talent and was taken advantage of many a time.. for all that he accomplished in his life.. he died pennyless...

      • Re:Tesla Invented Radio, not marconi (Score:4, Informative)

        by David Hume ( 200499 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:03PM (#8718539) Homepage

        And I have read of controversy even with what Marconi did, apparently he used someone else's wizardry and claimed it as his own. However, he did publicize it, or market as we say nowadays, which neither Tesla (you need to watch your spelling, you got it right once out of three tries) nor the other forgotten nobody did. Whether that actually spread its use much faster is another question too.


        This reminds me of an issue presented in a number of books I've read recently, including Isaac Newton [amazon.com] and Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation [amazon.com]. The issue concerns the date of discovery or invention, as opposed to the date of publication. As I recall, Newton kept many of his discoveries and theories secret for years -- perhaps to his later regret when he got into the priority dispute with Leibniz. Joao Magueijo appeared to be very concerned with establishing priority.

        It may not be a matter of publish or perish. More a matter of publish or be forgotten.

        • Calculus:Newton:Leibniz != Radio:Marconi:Tesla (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Actually, Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus independently. Newton invented it first, but Leibniz published first. Now, though, they both get credit.

          But, Marconi could not have invented radio by himself, and yet Tesla is just a footnote.

    • Re:Tesla Invented Radio, not marconi (Score:5, Funny)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:50PM (#8718397)
      Tesla will just have to settle for creating 40 foot arcs of lightning and enough inventions to fill a museum.
    • And I believe the courts finally agreed after a long long patent fight.
      • It wasn't just any court, it went all the way to the US Supreme Court in 1943.

        Tesla was vindicated posthumously by the verdict.

        Justice was eventually served.
        No thanks, to Andrew Carnegie, Edison, and Marconi who all had a hand in the "mysterious" reversal of the US Patent Office's rejection of Marconi's patent application due to Tesla's prior art.

        Of course, the greatest injustice to this day is the common association of the name Edison with Electric Utilities.

    • Re:Tesla Invented Radio, not marconi (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:55PM (#8718444)
      You know what else I just thought of...

      Not only did Tesla get royally screwed out of his biggest inventions, the original creator of a digital computer, Konrad Zues, hardly ever gets credit either. Windows and Apple...

      The lesson is not to try to hard yourself. But to watch others closely for good ideas you can steal.
      • Mind posting a reference? As far as I knew, Charles Babbage and a lady named Ada were the originators of digital computers. For stored programming, you look at Turing.
        • I got the spelling wrong, that's: Zuse

          Here's a general info link:
          http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathemat i cians/Zuse.html [st-and.ac.uk]

          He invented a mechanical computing machine that I think is most like what we think of today as a computer. It was programmable, digital, and stored data on a tape. It had memory similar to RAM. It didn't become famous because he did his work in Germany during the WW2 period. Others were independantly working on similar projects in Europe and America, which is why we te
          • Zuse's machine(s) had no mechanism for program flow control. It ran a series of instructions in order, A, B, C, D, E..

            There was no 'branch' or 'jump' instruction, and thus no conditionals. Ie; no way to represent "if A then B else C" or "goto D"

            While the work was very impressive, it wasnt truly a programmable general purpose computer.
          • >To my knowledge Babbage started working on
            >theory prior to Zuse's first computer, the Z1,
            >was completed.

            You are aware that Zuse and Babbage were not contemporaries? Babbage was a half century in the grave before Zuse was born.

            It was because of the failure of Zues' design that the third reich ended up buying tabulating machines from IBM...
            • You are aware that Zuse and Babbage were not contemporaries? Babbage was a half century in the grave before Zuse was born.

              You are absolutely right. I don't know that much about Babbage, and I wasn't even looking at the two most significant digits of the date!

              So Zuse couldn't have done any theory before Babbage.
    • Marconi was a business man, he took the work of real geniuses and introduced it to the world as his own. That's the way it works most of the time, even today.
    • It's a pity that a genius like Tesla does not get the credit he deserves in the modern world....

      • I never have understood the insanity on the internet regarding Tesla. He's an extremely well-known figure in scientific history, as a quick glance at any textbook on the subject will amply show. Where does everyone get the idea he's an unappreciated genius? Also keep in mind that the man was clinically insane, so a lot of the stuff he claimed to have invented never existed.

        As for the radio thing, yeah, he probably did more than Marconi, but both of them built on the research of others. Tesla was not, a
        • But for some reason the fringe selects Tesla as their hero, despite the fact that there are people who've done more important work in science and technology and gotten less credit.

          I think it's because he came up with so many things, but ended up dying broke and insane. You see, he's just like the rest of us: an unappreciated genius whose ideas were stolen without him even getting any credit, much less money. Why, who among us can say that no one has ever "stolen" a great idea from us and built a world-gir

        • But for some reason the fringe selects Tesla as their hero, despite the fact that there are people who've done more important work in science and technology and gotten less credit.

          Mainly the supporters of Tesla are from the perpetual motion group.

          They show Tesla to their suckers, ahem, I mean investors as an example of a "unappreciated genius," and then say that they are the same thing.

          Basically like saying that Albert Einstein did poorly at math, and I do poorly at math, therefore I must be as smart as
        • He only went insane in his later years for one. (probably due to being ripped off so badly by edison and westinghouse)

          I would suppose that inventing the AC motor and generator (I.E. enabling all of this wonderful modern shit, like your computer and the internet) would be one of the main factors in why people give so much of a shit about him; and I wouldn't exactly call them "Fringe" either...

          Tesla did a lot more than just invent some crazy lightning generator and all the other stuff; yea he got a little c
    • Yup, but it a classic case of patenting something already in use - Marconi patented the idea first (1896) and even though later rulings went against this patent, by then Marconi's business empire was so large it kinda just kept rolling along.
    • The first documented scientific experiments were done by Popov [securehosts.com] in Russia. But he was too slow in publishing and patenting the results.

  • Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GiantMonkey ( 664532 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:47PM (#8718361) Journal
    I wonder if the author points out the fact that Marconi blatently 'borrowed' technology for his radio, stealing the title of inventor of the radio from Nikola Tesla?

    • Re:Tesla (Score:3, Interesting)

      by paranode ( 671698 )
      Hey now, at least he got a cool unit of measurement for magnetic inductivity named after him!

      Ah, who am I kidding... poor fellow.

    • Re:Tesla (Score:5, Informative)

      by TimeForGuinness ( 701731 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:10PM (#8718600) Journal
      From a PBS discussion with Jim Hardesty & others: [pbs.org]

      "Marconi used Hertz's system initially, but sending the signal "S" across the Atlantic would not have been possible with that system. So it became obvious to Marconi and other experimenters of the time that Tesla's system was an efficient, powerful resonator that produced waves you could work with."

      "The simple fact about Marconi's "S" is that he used the Tesla system to transmit signals and claimed that these were ideas he had developed himself."

      "At the Marconi site on Cape Cod, the placards state clearly that Marconi used the Tesla oscillator to send signals."

      "Marconi was a good businessman. He built the first practical equipment. And for that reason, his name is the one people remember when they think of radio."

    • Re:Tesla (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Our Man In Redmond ( 63094 )
      Marconi didn't invent the radio. Most people will admit that. What Marconi did was prove that you could use it as something other than a local curiosity, to send signals outside your back yard and indeed across an ocean.

      This was a very important discovery for the time because once a ship was out of the harbor and out of sight of land it was cut off from the rest of the world, other than communications with other passing ships. Radio allowed ships at sea to communicate with land stations and each other. In

  • Really Cool, This (Score:5, Informative)

    by FractusMan ( 711004 ) * on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:47PM (#8718364)
    Wanna know what's really awesome? He received the first signal in Newfoundland, but, if memory serves, he SENT the first signal the other way from Cape Breton. The exact site of this location is about... Oh... One hundred feet from my chair. The Marconi Monument at Table Head is small, but cool. We get tourists from all over the world here.
    • Seeing those lonely foundation blocks where the towers once stood is only enough to give one a glimpse of what that huge structure must have been like. We take a lot for granted nowdays, but seeing what is left of one of the first successful attempts to bridge the Atlantic - and imagining how it must have been like then - really makes you realize how big a deal this was at the time. I don't think I've -ever- felt so humbled as when I stood there by those old foundation blocks, looking east out over the oc
  • Gavin Weightman tells the story of the life of Guglielmo Marconi...

    My guess...
    Up until the point he revolutionized communication, he got beat up a lot and kids called him Goulash Macaroni.
  • And I'll refer to my copy of "The Marconi Book of Wireless", first edition 1936, if I need any insight - thanks!

  • What a coincidence! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just finished some Marconi and Cheese for lunch not 5 minutes before this story was posted.
  • For those not familiar with Marconi beyond his popular title as the inventor of the radio, one of the first surprises is that much of the story takes place in England and not Italy, due in no small part to the fact that Marconi's mother was Irish. Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1874. He was raised there, and it was in Bologna that he laid the foundation for his future successes in the wireless business. While the existence of "Hertzian" waves was known before Marconi's work, and even though their use

  • Tesla (Score:5, Informative)

    by TeknoType ( 766821 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:53PM (#8718435)
    I wonder whether the book gives credit to Tesla, the man that some see as the true inventor of the radio. Some background information at: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html

  • My take (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AmandaHugginkiss ( 756492 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:53PM (#8718436)
    While Mr. Weightman is a little skimpy on biographical depth (I never quite felt I understood what made Marconi tick), he is great on interesting details...for example, he explains how wireless was used to help capture the infamous murderer Dr. Crippen, and he also tells how Orthodox Russian priests once almost destroyed Marconi equipment because they wanted to anoint it with holy water! The book is meant for the lay reader, and the scientific detail is kept to a minimum. Very enjoyable.

  • Key quote (Score:5, Informative)

    by color of static ( 16129 ) <smasters@ieeeCHEETAH.org minus cat> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:02PM (#8718524) Homepage Journal
    Marconi was much more of a craftsman and businessman than a scientist.

    I think the above sums up a lot about Marconi and radio. He did little more then make the Hertzian spark gap generator acceptable for trans atlantic transmissions along with a practical receiver. The transmitter technology was so primitive/disruptive that is was banned later on.

    Real radio came from a handful of other inventors who don't get much credit these days. Tesla did lots of work at the same time as Marconi on modulated carrier waves for radio (the method we use today).

    He shouldn't hold the title "inventor of radio", but "inventor of the radio industry".

    • Re:Key quote (Score:3, Interesting)

      by westlake ( 615356 )
      He did little more then make the Hertzian spark gap generator acceptable for trans atlantic transmissions along with a practical receiver.

      That alone would seem to be no small achievement. Marconi's mechanical spark gap generators were rugged and reliable and were still in use long after the introduction of the vacuum tube.

  • You there! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fill up my motorcar with petroleum distillate, and revulcanize my tires. Posthaste! I must get to the anti-speedbump meeting!
  • i'm stretching myself with the subject, so bear with me.

    not only did Marconi not invent the radio (though i'll admit he did help make it useful), but he was an assistant of Tesla's at the time.

    can you imagine how you would feel if one of YOUR assistants patented one of YOUR new inventions right under your knose?

    and not only that, but after Marconi emigrated to South America, he took with him another one of Tesla's inventions and used it to fly to Mars!

    (no, i'm not really serious.)

  • Movies kill the radio star (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:12PM (#8718618) Homepage Journal
    Ken Russell is currently in production with his biopic about Tesla [imdb.com], the inventor of radio, AC power, and everything else in the 20th Century except toothpaste tubes and the phonograph.

    "What's a Radio Picture?" - the Rocky Horror Picture Show audience

    • Re:Movies kill the radio star (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      make install, not war

      Congratulations, Doc Ruby: You just won the 'Slashdot Dirty GNU/Hippy of the Year' award!
      You win lunch with Richard Stallman and a bar of soap (a whole year's supply!)

      • Re:Movies kill the radio star (Score:4, Funny)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:36PM (#8718883) Homepage Journal
        This is one of the most pleasant accolades any Anonymous autocharicature Coward has ever bestowed on me. I would like to thank the Academy [gnu.org], Mr. Stallman and his hairdresser, and the hordes of Slashdotters who also agree that application building is preferable to destroying. As a show of solidarity, I will let you, Anonymous warmonger Coward, keep the bar of soap, if it's all you've got for the year. Thanks for giving peace a chance.
    • Tesla was so intelligent that a lot of people at the time thought he was from outer space. Imagine that, being so smart that people think you're a space alien.

  • Whispers in the Air (Score:5, Informative)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:19PM (#8718693) Homepage
    I will suggest that all and sundry might enjoy "Whispers in the Air", a radio documentary about Marconi that was produced literally at the foot of the cliff in St Johns where Marconi made his historic broadcast.

    RealAudio links are to be found on this page [batteryradio.com].

    Chris Brookes [batteryradio.com] is a wonderful award winning producer, and has also worked on documentaries about Vikings and about Reginald Fessenden [ic.gc.ca], who all Canadians know beat Marconi to the punch any how.

    "A Canadian, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the first person to prove that voices and music could be heard over the air without wires. Yet some books ignore him, others mistakenly call him an American, and one Canadian encyclopedia cites his mother as the principal founder of Empire Day but overlooks her eldest son's accomplishments. Marconi, on the other hand, is given credit for radio even though his theory on sound waves was wrong and even though he was still sending only Morse code signals when Fessenden made his first "broadcast.""

  • Comparison to Software Today (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sparkhead ( 589134 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:19PM (#8718700)
    Marconi can be credited with key innovations that led to the first practical system of wireless telegraphy.

    He can be credited, but not correctly. He made no key innovations over Tesla's system. He was a businessman.

    The parallels today's software world with Gates in the position of Marconi. Great businessman, but not an innovator. But he is who "the unwashed masses" know and who will probably be remembered in the history books.

  • Anyone see the Princess Marconi interview? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:20PM (#8718708)
    On NWI (Canada) I saw an interview with Marconi's daughter. She was also the Princess of Italy but that's beside the point.

    Anyway, she told of how when she was a little girl her dad would take her and and family friends out on the family yacht and would amaze them with his electrical gadgetry, namely a device that he would throw a line over the side and troll it behind the boat for a few hours. When he would reel it in there would be spider webs of gold thread trailing off of it.
    She was only 6 or 7 at the time and didn't understand what he was doing but she said it had something to do with radio frequencies that attracted the gold particles in the sea water to the antenna, they would bind and create the spider webs.

    That was one cool ass interview. She had LOTS of neat stories about the things her father did back in the day..

    • Re: the Gold Thread device

      Yeah, sure. I'd like to see that gold thread thing working. Could it have been just yellowish kelp? Because I've seen plenty of that. It doesn't resemble gold, though.

      Whether it's true or not, I'd like to know how it could possibly have worked.

      And of course, the obligatory moneymaking scheme:
      1) Invent electrical device that attracts trace amounts of gold from the ocean, although gold suspended in the water is hard to believe.
      2) ???
      3) Profit!

  • Tesla won the patent rights...posthumously (Score:4, Informative)

    by skyryder12 ( 677216 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:24PM (#8718749)
    Tesla sold his patents on AC to George Westinghouse for not a lot of money. Westinghouse was prepared to pay up to 20 million. Tesla then poured his energies into wirless energy transmission and was far more innovative than others in this area. Marconi got the patent, (which was under dispute until after Tesla died, at which point he was found to hold the prior art) and the profit.
    • Actually, Tesla did license the patent to Westinghouse for the AC motor for decent royalties, but one night Westinghouse did an RIAA move and begged Tesla to revoke his royalties, saying that the financial obligation would crush the company! Tesla thought about it and signed it in engineering spirit, giving a way millions.

      Suffice to say this cramped Tesla's research, invention, and partying capacities, and he ended up dying in an NY apartment in the forties after having lived only on crackers and milk fo

  • but Tesla invented the radio.

    Go to :

    www.teslasociety.com/radio.htm [teslasociety.com]

  • Historcal paralells... (Score:3, Informative)

    by S3D ( 745318 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:47PM (#8719027)
    Interesting, that wireless communication was not adopted by military in WWI, but in WWII it made a critical difference. German blitzkriegs in France and Russia were possible because they embraced radio through the all chain of commands. Opposite, russian tanks (on average thechnically superior to germans) and fighters didn't have a radio in the first years of war and were massacred by german. Russians had to learn importance of the wireless communication by hard way. I don't belive in the "Internet Pearl Harbor" in the nearest decade. But in 20-30 years Gibbson-stile information warfare may be possible...
    • IIRC, The Japanese didn't carry radios in their Zero-sen fighters during WWII. The pilots communicated to each other visually to each other through hand signals. The bigger planes had them, but the familiar silver plane with the red meatball insignia seen all around the Pacific didn't.

      I also recall that the Russian fighter that shot down that KAL flight that wandered into their airspace back in the mid-80's didn't have a voice radio, rather the radio it did have was used to light up a panel that showed w
      • I also recall that the Russian fighter that shot down that KAL flight that wandered into their airspace back in the mid-80's didn't have a voice radio, rather the radio it did have was used to light up a panel that showed what the commanders wanted the pilot to do.

        That's wrong. Maybe they didn't have scrambled voice radio, so did rely on panel for secure communications.

        Actually there were reports of recorded pilot's conversations made by Japanese. Here: http://avia.russian.ee/air/747/kale_3.html

        • Then some documentary I saw at one time was wrong. At that time they showed a plane, a "light panel" that showed orders issued from the ground controllers and mentioned that there was no way for the pilot to use his radio (to contact the KAL flight) because the Soviets at the time did not allow their aircraft to transmit on civilian frequencies to presumably make defections more difficult.

          This was shown ages ago, perhaps around the time of the incident. Thanks for the link, I hate it when I spout off ina
  • In this respect, Marconi was much more of a craftsman and businessman than a scientist.

    I wonder how you would classify Edison [thomasedison.com], with 1368 patents to his name but no formal scientific pedagogy.

    A lot of scientists incorporate & turn into businessman/scientist - eg Benjamin Franklin [fi.edu], Dr. Stephen Wolfram [stephenwolfram.com]( Founder of Mathematica [wolframscience.com]), Dr. R [rsasecurity.com] & Dr. A [rsasecurity.com]( invented the RSA cryptographic scheme [rsasecurity.com], Carl Sagan [carlsagan.com], and a whole lot of people in biotech.

    The skillsets to be both seem conflicting - businessmen need a M

    • Given that film-makers went all the way out to California to escape Edison's premeditated patent lock on film projectors and equipment, and DC-power-based Edison was running ads about "deadly AC power" showcasing electric chairs to fight Westinghouse (Tesla), I'd say he definitely possessed a Machiavellical sense of brutal realism...

      True, maybe Edison was just floating through the gentler Platonic realms of patents, market monopolies and bullying competitors those competitors that he couldn't crush with l
    • Edison was not a scientist. Sometimes, he was an engineer; most often he was a businessman, taking credit for the work of others in his "invention factory".
  • Marconi invented nothing, he borrowed from Tesla. Tesla is the reason we have computers, Tesla is the reason we have wireless, Tesla is god. :)
    History lesson over.

  • Tesla - I know it's what others are saying... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:40PM (#8720817)
    ...but I don't want it buried in the depths of modding.

    Tesla had working, wireless voice communications a decade before Marconi even tried simple things such as Morse[1] code.

    How brilliant was Tesla? Some think of him as a crackpot, but there are a few things which cannot be disputed: 1) AC: had he not worked & developed AC (not necessarily alone), Edison[2] would have been the "winner" and DC would be used, requiring a substation nearly every other city block. 2) He demonstrated mastery of other forms of power & electricity. This includes "fireballs" which have only been seen sporadically in nature and he created & displayed them at will. 3) He believed it was possible to transmit power wirelessly - imagine if he'd had time to finish that before he died in 1943? 4) The most telling statement of all: the government largely considered him to be a crackpot. If this were true, why did the government confiscate everything he owned when he died? IOW, if he was so far out in left field, why would they have done that?

    [1] Because most of the people who post on Slashdot can't get spelling & punctuation correct, I'm pointing out eponymous examples requiring capitalization.

    [2] Edison even tried to subvert AC: he paid the neighborhood kids to bring in cats & dogs and he electrocuted them. The animals were then used as examples of what would happen to anyone/anything who came into contact with AC - how dangerous it could be. Also, after AC was installed in the White House, the President [and and family] required the staff to flip the switches. AC accomplished what it was supposed to, but the *great* Thomas Edison stated how dangerous it was and the President couldn't take the risk of being electrocuted.

  • Italian Electrician (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Drishmung ( 458368 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @08:33PM (#8721183)
    I have (or had) somewhere an elderly Webster's that has a bunch of extra stuff at the back---including a series of brief biographies of famous people.

    The entry for Marconi reads, in full, Italian Electrician.

    This always seemed to me to be the most astonishingly unhelpful description imaginable.

  • Found these quotes after a quick search

    re: Mahlon Loomis

    Subj: Very Early US RADIO HISTORY (1864 to 1874 period) Text: In 1864 a Washington DC Dentist demonstrated publically wireless radio between two local 2000 ft tall mountains in nearby Virginia.
    **** In 1872 US Congress awarded the inventor with a Patent on wire- less radio.
    **** In 1873 he was awarded by US Congress the Corporate Charter for "Loomis Aerial Telegraphy Corporation".
    **** Public debate also went on in US Congress why he shou
  • Marconi invented the radio? Sure as long as Bill Gates sold the first operating system for the Intel microprocessor.
  • Nobody besides every geek on this thread.

    • When I saw this article, I thought I would need to set the record straight, but I'm glad to see that my fellow /.er's are well versed about Nikola Tesla. You'd be suprised how few of my fellow electrical engineering majors have never heard of the man who laid the foundation for much of the EE field.
  • Bell paid for Marconi's lab out in the east coast where he made the transatlantic radio premier. Marconi was washed up and Bell rescued him. We owe a great deal more to Bell than we assume.

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