49 Fun Facts About Guglielmo Marconi

In which Italian city was Guglielmo Marconi born in 1874?

Bologna. Italy's ministry of posts took no interest in his invention, so in 1896 he left for London with his mother to find backers for his wireless.

Marconi's mother Annie was the granddaughter of the founder of which famous brand?

Jameson Irish Whiskey. The family tie paid off in London, where his cousin Henry Jameson Davis financed the first patent and helped him set up his company.

In 1910 a ship's Marconi wireless message led to the arrest of which murderer as he fled across the Atlantic?

Dr Crippen. He was fleeing to Canada with his lover when the ship's captain grew suspicious and radioed Britain, and the pair were arrested on arrival.

How was the young Marconi mostly educated?

Private tutors at home, for the most part: the family spent long spells in Florence and Livorno, and the teacher who mattered most to him was Vincenzo Rosa, a physics master in Livorno.

Which physics professor let the young Marconi use his university's laboratory and library?

Augusto Righi. He had refined the spark oscillator used to make radio waves in the laboratory, and Marconi built his first wireless transmitters around Righi's design.

Which physicist demonstrated in 1888 that electromagnetic radiation could be produced and detected?

Heinrich Hertz. He died in 1894 aged just 36, and the articles written about his waves that year are what set the 20-year-old Marconi experimenting.

Marconi's attic laboratory at Villa Griffone was nicknamed the 'Stanza dei Bachi' after what?

Silkworms: earlier occupants had raised them in the attic, and when the Marconis gave that up the teenager was allowed to turn the empty room into his laboratory.

In 1902 Marconi discovered that his long-distance wireless signals carried much farther at what time of day?

At night. He spotted it aboard the liner Philadelphia, and it shaped the business: his Cape Cod station sent its news to ships at night, when signals carried best.

What early radio-wave detector, based on Édouard Branly's work, did Marconi refine for his receiver?

The coherer: a glass tube of metal filings whose resistance dropped sharply when radio waves arrived. Marconi tried powder after powder and settled on nickel and silver.

Marconi's long-distance signals followed the Earth's curve by bouncing off which layer of the atmosphere?

The ionosphere. Physicists insisted radio waves travelled in straight lines and would be lost beyond the horizon; the charged layer that bends them back was proposed only after his Atlantic signal got through.

Which two changes gave Marconi his 1895 range breakthrough?

Raising the antenna and grounding the equipment let his waves bend round obstacles: the test signal crossed a hill about 2 km away, and a gunshot from the far side told him it had arrived.

Marconi served as one of Italy's delegates to which international gathering?

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The war had turned the inventor into a diplomat: in 1917 Italy had already sent him to the United States with its war mission.

In 1932 Marconi installed the first microwave telephone link, joining Vatican City to which papal residence?

Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer retreat in the Alban Hills. Marconi supervised the installation himself, a year after building the Vatican its radio station.

Which General Post Office engineer became Marconi's key early supporter in Britain?

William Preece, the Post Office's chief engineer, lent Marconi his laboratory for public demonstrations, then lectured on the results to packed London audiences.

Which British physicist fought Marconi over radio tuning patents until Marconi's company bought his patent?

Oliver Lodge. He had patented tuned, or 'syntonic', circuits in 1897, before Marconi's famous tuning patent, and the two sides wrangled for years before the buy-out ended it.

Marconi's first wireless message over open sea, in May 1897, crossed which body of water?

The Bristol Channel. Post Office engineers watched the signal cross from Flat Holm island to the Welsh coast near Cardiff, and within days Marconi had stretched the range to about nine miles.

In 1899 a New York newspaper hired Marconi to report which yacht race by wireless?

The America's Cup. Marconi fitted two ships with wireless to flash the race's progress to shore, and the publicity was so good that an American branch of his firm followed.

In 1899 the first wireless call for help at sea came from what kind of vessel off the Kent coast?

A lightship: the East Goodwin, a floating lighthouse off Kent, had been fitted with Marconi wireless only months earlier and used it to call out a lifeboat.

Which stretch of water did Marconi's signal cross on 27 March 1899, from Wimereux to South Foreland?

The English Channel, about 50 km wide on that route. Navies took note: later that year British warships on manoeuvres were swapping wireless messages at over 100 km.

From which Cornish station was the first transatlantic signal transmitted in December 1901?

Poldhu. A storm had wrecked the station's great ring of masts that autumn, so the historic signal went out from a makeshift fan of wires.

Where did Marconi report hearing the transatlantic letter S on 12 December 1901?

Signal Hill, Newfoundland, was a late change of plan: storms had wrecked the receiving station he had built on Cape Cod, so he switched to a shorter crossing.

Why do historians still argue over Marconi's 1901 transatlantic reception?

No instrument recorded it: Marconi and his assistant listened on a telephone earpiece for three faint clicks, which doubters said could have been atmospheric static.

Which Indian scientist invented the type of detector Marconi may have used to hear his 1901 transatlantic signal?

Jagadish Chandra Bose. In Calcutta in 1895 he had used radio waves to ring a bell and fire gunpowder at a distance, and his detector design reached Marconi by way of the Italian navy.

Which two heads of state exchanged wireless greetings via the South Wellfleet station in January 1903?

Theodore Roosevelt and Edward VII. Within a year the same Cape Cod station was earning its keep by sending news bulletins to liners for their on-board newspapers.

A transatlantic radiotelegraph service opened in 1907 between Glace Bay and which Irish town?

Clifden. The service went head to head with the undersea cable companies, which had been hostile ever since Marconi's first Atlantic signal threatened their hold on the route.

Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with which German physicist?

Ferdinand Braun, whose changes to Marconi's transmitter circuits greatly extended their range. He is better remembered today for inventing the cathode-ray tube.

After which 1909 collision off Nantucket did wireless distress calls bring ships to the rescue?

RMS Republic and SS Florida. Republic's operator, Jack Binns, kept calling for help from the sinking liner until rescue ships found her in the fog, and the next year the US made wireless compulsory on ocean steamers.

Titanic's wireless distress calls brought which Cunard liner to rescue more than 700 survivors?

Carpathia. 'Those who have been saved have been saved through one man, Mr Marconi,' Britain's Postmaster General said afterwards.

Marconi was offered free passage on Titanic but took which ship three days earlier?

Lusitania. His daughter Degna later explained that he had paperwork to get through and preferred the public stenographer aboard the Cunard liner.

Which singer gave one of Britain's first entertainment broadcasts from Marconi's Chelmsford works in 1920?

Nellie Melba. Her song recital from the factory was heard in several countries, and within two years the company had a licence to broadcast regular programmes.

What was the name of Marconi's steam yacht, converted into a floating laboratory?

Elettra. He bought the yacht in 1919, and when his youngest daughter was born in 1930 she was given the same name.

Before he could marry his second wife in 1927, the divorced Marconi had to obtain what?

An annulment. The Church did not recognise his divorce, so with his first wife's agreement a marriage that had begun in 1905 and brought them children was declared void.

Which pope commissioned Marconi to build Vatican Radio in 1931?

Pius XI. At the opening Marconi introduced the Pope at the microphone himself, and Pius XI then gave the first papal radio address to listeners around the world.

Which noble title did King Victor Emmanuel III grant Marconi in 1929?

Marquess, or marchese in Italian. The title was hereditary, so it passed to his son Giulio when Marconi died eight years later.

Marconi was appointed to which Italian body in 1914 for services to the nation?

The Senate. A senator at 40, he volunteered when Italy entered the war months later, serving first as an army lieutenant and then as a naval officer.

Which political movement did Marconi formally join in 1923?

The National Fascist Party. Membership brought him high office under Mussolini, including the presidency of Italy's national research council.

Marconi died in 1937 in which city?

Rome. He died there of heart trouble at 63, but he does not lie there: his tomb is a mausoleum in the grounds of the family villa where his experiments began.

How did radio stations worldwide honour Marconi at the time of his funeral?

Two minutes of silence: transmitters around the world shut down together, leaving the airwaves as quiet as they had been before Marconi.

In 1931 Marconi was due to switch on the floodlights of which statue by radio from Italy?

Christ the Redeemer. The signal was meant to cross the Atlantic to Rio for the statue's inauguration, though by one account bad weather forced the lights to be switched on by hand.

In 1943 the US Supreme Court voided a Marconi tuning patent, citing earlier work by John Stone and which famous inventor?

Nikola Tesla, who had died only months earlier. The ruling covered a tuning patent and left Marconi's original patent for radio transmission untouched.

A car crash in Italy in 1912 cost Marconi what?

An eye. Marconi was at the wheel when his car met another head-on on the road to Genoa, and glass from the windscreen cost him his right eye; his research hardly paused.

Besides an asteroid, Marconi has a crater named after him on which world?

The Moon. Marconi crater lies on the far side, the one place nearby that is permanently shielded from the Earth's radio chatter.

Under what name did Marconi found his UK business in 1897?

The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company. His own name was missing at first; it was added three years later, when the firm became Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company.

Marconi showed his wireless to British army and navy observers in 1896 on which stretch of English countryside?

Salisbury Plain. Officers from both services watched alongside Post Office engineers, and within a year his signals were carrying several miles across the plain.

Marconi's stations 2MT and 2LO led in 1922 to the founding of which broadcaster?

The BBC, founded as the British Broadcasting Company when the rival wireless makers, Marconi's among them, agreed to merge their broadcasting interests into one.

In a 1922 lecture Marconi predicted the principle behind which technology?

Radar. He foretold it in a talk to American radio engineers, and in 1935, two years before his death, he showed the principle working in detection trials in Italy.

In 1930 Marconi sent a radio signal from Italy that switched on the lights in which distant city?

Sydney. He simply pressed a Morse key aboard his yacht in Genoa harbour, and the lamps of the city's town hall lit up half a world away.

In 1919 the assets of Marconi's American company were sold to create which US radio giant?

RCA, the Radio Corporation of America. Washington did not want the nation's wireless traffic in British hands, so it pressed the Marconi interests to sell to General Electric, which set up RCA.

What held Marconi's aerial aloft when he heard the first transatlantic signal in 1901?

A kite. A gale had carried the balloon off and the kite itself was hard to keep up, yet the wire it held was aloft when the faint signal came through.