Other life facts (Courtesy of Wikipedia):

-On 16 March 1905, Marconi married Beatrice O'Brien. They had three daughters (one lived shortly), and a son. They divorced in 1924.
-On 15 June 1927, Marconi married Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali . They had one daughter.
-Children's names: Degna, Gioia, Giulio(son) (all w/O'Brien marriage), and Elettra (w/Bezzi-Scail marriage).
-Marconi had a brother, Alfonso, and a stepbrother, Luigi.

-Benito Mussolini was Marconi's best man when he married his second wife in 1927.
-The Marconi Stallions, a FOOTBALL club in Australia, is named after Guglielmo Marconi.
-Villa Marconi, a retirement home located in Nepean, Ontario is named after Marconi.
-La Scuola D'Italia, a private Italian school in New York's Upper East Side, is named after Marconi.

LATER YEARS

In 1914, Marconi was made a senator in Italy. During World War I, Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio system. In 1924, he was made a marchese (marchese= Italian nobleman next in rank above a count). He joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923 (fascist=a political philosophy, movement, or regime). Marconi died in Rome in 1937 at age 63, and Italy held a state funeral for Marconi. Also, all radio stations throughout the world observed two minutes of silence.

Continuing Work

Marconi companies recieved a reputation for being technically conservative. In 1920, the Chelmsford Marconi factory was where the first entertainment radio broadcast in the United Kingdom. In 1922, regular entertainment broadcasts were transmitted from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle.

Patent Disputes

'In 1900 Alexander Stepanovich Popov stated to the Congress of Russian Electrical Engineers that: "[...] the emission and reception of signals by Marconi by means of electric oscillations [was] nothing new. In America, the famous engineer Nikola Tesla carried the same experiments in 1893." In 1943, a lawsuit regarding Marconi's numerous other radio patents was resolved in the United States. The court decision was based on the prior work conducted by others, including Nikola Tesla, Oliver Lodge, and John Stone Stone, from which some of Marconi patents (such as U.S. Patent 763,772 ) stemmed. The U. S. Supreme Court stated that,
The Tesla patent No. 645,576, applied for September 2, 1897 and allowed March 20, 1900, disclosed a four-circuit system, having two circuits each at transmitter and receiver, and recommended that all four circuits be tuned to the same frequency. [... He] recognized that his apparatus could, without change, be used for wireless communication, which is dependent upon the transmission of electrical energy.[24]
In making their decision, the court noted,
Marconi's reputation as the man who first achieved successful radio transmission rests on his original patent, which became reissue No. 11,913, and which is not here [320 U.S. 1, 38] in question. That reputation, however well-deserved, does not entitle him to a patent for every later improvement which he claims in the radio field. Patent cases, like others, must be decided not by weighing the reputations of the litigations, but by careful study of the merits of their respective contentions and proofs."'


(Excerpts from Wikipedia)

Transmissions across the Atlantic

In 1900 Marconi began researching how to transmit a signal across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1901, Marconi sent a message using a 400 foot kite supported antenna. The distance between the two points was about 2,100 miles. On 18 January 1903, Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, sent a messge to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, marking the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.

Early Experiments

Marconi's goal was to create a way of wireless telegraphy. Marconi's system contained:
-a radio transmitter, kind of like the one Heinrich Hertz used.
-A wire above the ground
-a coherer reciever. coherer = radio signal detector
-telegraph key, which sent Morse code
-telegraph register, which printed Morse code onto roll of paper
At first, Marconi could only signal little distances, but soon he could send signals over a hill. On 13 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over water. The message read: "Are you ready."

WORK ON RADIO

Marconi had a strong liking for science and electricity as a child. He was allowed to study electormagnetic radiation under Augusto Righi, a University of Bologna physicist who had done research on Heinrich Hertz's work on the subject.

List of patents (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

British Patents:

British patent No. 12,039, Date of Application 2 June 1896; Complete Specification Left, 2 March 1897; Accepted, 2 July 1897 (later claimed by Oliver Lodge to contain his own ideas which he failed to patent)
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US Patents:

U.S. Patent 0,586,193 "Transmitting electrical signals", (using Ruhmkorff coil and Morse code key) filed December 1896, patented July, 1897
U.S. Patent 0,624,516 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,627,650 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,647,007 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,647,008 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,647,009 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,650,109 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,650,110 "Apparatus employed in wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,668,315 "Receiver for electrical oscillations".
U.S. Patent 0,760,463 "Wireless signaling system".
U.S. Patent 0,792,528 "Wireless telegraphy". Filed Oct 13, 1903; Issued 13, 1905.
U.S. Patent 0,676,332 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy" (later practical version of system)
U.S. Patent 0,757,559 "Wireless telegraphy system". Filed Nov 19, 1901; Issued Apr 19, 1904.
U.S. Patent 0,760,463 "Wireless signaling system". Filed Sep 10, 1903; Issued May 24, 1904.
U.S. Patent 0,763,772 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy" (Four tuned system; this innovation was predated by N. Tesla, O. Lodge, and J. S. Stone)
U.S. Patent 0,786,132 "Wireless telegraphy". Filed Oct 13, 1903
U.S. Patent 0,792,528 "Wireless telegraphy". Filed Oct 13, 1903; Issued Jun 13, 1905.
U.S. Patent 0,884,986 "Wireless telegraphy". Filed Nov 28, 1902; Issued Apr 14, 1908.
U.S. Patent 0,884,987 "Wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,884,988 "Detecting electrical oscillations". Filed Feb 2, 1903; Issued Apr 14, 1908.
U.S. Patent 0,884,989 "Wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,935,381 "Transmitting apparatus for wireless telegraphy". Filed Apr 10, 1908; Issued Sep 28, 1909.
U.S. Patent 0,935,382 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy".
U.S. Patent 0,935,383 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy". Filed Apr 10, 1908; Issued Sep 28, 1909.
U.S. Patent 0,954,640 "Apparatus for wireless telegraphy". Filed Mar 31, 1909; Issued Apr 12, 1910.
U.S. Patent 0,997,308 "Transmitting apparatus for wireless telegraphy". Filed Jul 15, 1910; Issued Jul 11, 1911.
U.S. Patent 1,102,990 "Means for generating alternating electric currents". Filed Jan 27, 1914; Issued Jul 7, 1914.
U.S. Patent 1,148,521 "Transmitter for wireless telegraphy". Filed Jul 20, 1908.
U.S. Patent 1,226,099 "Transmitting apparatus for use in wireless telegraphy and telephony". Filed Dec 31, 1913; Issued May 15, 1917.
U.S. Patent 1,271,190 "Wireless telegraph transmitter".
U.S. Patent 1,377,722 "Electric accumulator". Filed Mar 9, 1918
U.S. Patent 1,148,521 "Transmitter for wireless telegraphy". Filed Jul 20, 1908; Issued Aug 3, 1915.
U.S. Patent 1,981,058 "Thermionic valve". Filed Oct 14, 1926; Issued Nov 20, 1934.

EARLY YEARS

Marconi was born April 25, 1874 near Bologna, Italy. Marconi did not do well in school as a child. He was baptized as a Catholic, but brought up as a protestant, and was a member of the Anglican church

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi is most famous for creating what is now known as the radio, which is widely used to many extents today. He also won half of the share of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. Thanks to him, we can listen to music or sporting events from across the world