THE AGE OF WIRELESS
Marconi got the Nobel Prize for wireless telegraphy, but the US courts eventually found in favour of Nikola Tesla’s radio patent. So who really invented the radio?
Young Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi was credited with the invention of the wireless telegraph and received the Nobel Prize.
But his achievements were inspired by other people’s work and were based on patents belonging to the brilliant Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla.
In the mid-1800s, it takes a long time to communicate across the Atlantic Ocean. News about revolutions in Europe or losses in the American civil war takes weeks to arrive via ship, while storms, shipwreck or piratical intervention sometimes mean that it is lost altogether.
This changes radically in 1866, when a cable is placed on the ocean floor from Great Britain to the US. Now it is suddenly possible to send telegrams between the continents. This new rapid link remains unstable, however, as the 3122km cable often breaks and requires repair.
Could messages be sent instead through the air? Visionaries, inventors and telegraph companies all imagine new ways of communicating without the cables. One of them is Nikola Tesla of Serbia. Another is young Italian Guglielmo Marconi, the son of an aristocratic landowner from near Bologna, Italy.
Wireless ‘S’ for success
On 12 December 1901 at 12.30AM, the dream comes true. A weak sound finally reaches 25-year-old Marconi, who has been waiting anxiously for days on a windy hill in Newfoundland, Canada, as his assistants 3500km away on the coast of Cornwall, England, have tried to get a signal through: “beep, beep, beep, pause” – the Morse signal for ‘S’.
Marconi hands the earphones to his assistant George Kemp, who also hears the rhythmic sounds. The two men look at each other and know that they have made history. “For the first time, I felt positive that mankind would one day be able to send wireless messages not only across the Atlantic, but to the remotest corners of the world,” Marconi subsequently writes in his records.
The Italian is celebrated for his ground-breaking feat. Though sceptics believe that he cheated and lied about the three beeps, the event dispelled any remaining doubt that sound could travel through the air over very long distances.
At the banquet for the young radio pioneer, a congratulations letter is read out. The sender is Nikola Tesla, an extremely gifted but eccentric scientist. The 56-year-old Tesla already holds patents for a series of inventions which become key for the development of the radio telegraph. He sent his first radio signal long before the young Marconi entered the scene, and one of his many then-current projects was to send a radio signal from Colorado to Paris.
“Marconi seems to have outpaced you,” one of Tesla’s employees says, when they get the news of the trans-Atlantic radio signal.
“Marconi is a fine fellow – let him continue. He uses 17 of my patents,” Tesla replies. Tesla perhaps does not have the imagination to foresee that he will get neither money nor recognition for his inventions. But that is what happens.
Marconi’s invention of the radio makes him rich and famous, and in 1909 he is awarded the Nobel Prize. Yet his invention is based on Tesla’s ideas.
Theory does not interest Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi grew up in Bologna as the son of an Italian father, Giuseppe Marconi, and an Irish mother. He was
curious and inventive, but easily bored in school; he gets poor grades. Practical physics experiments are the only thing that really catch his attention. His mother Annie consequently employs a private physics teacher for him, and when Guglielmo fails to get into university, she sees to it that he is trained by physics professor Augusto Righi instead.
Righi specialises in electromagnetism and he is very interested in new theories about electromagnetic waves from Heinrich Hertz of Germany. Young Marconi loves what he is doing. Theory does not appeal very much to him, but he is very keen on using the new knowledge about radio waves in practice.
His experiments begin in the attic of his parent’s house. Marconi copies Hertz’ experiments and is further inspired by Nikola Tesla. In 1892 and 1893, Tesla gives a series of lectures about how electromagnetic waves can be used for communication, and his lectures and theories are published in a series of scientific journals that young Guglielmo Marconi most likely reads.
In the summer of 1895, Guglielmo Marconi makes his brother Alfonso carry a radio receiver a few kilometres away from the house. The two brothers agree that Guglielmo is to send a radio signal. If Alfonso receives it, he is to shoot his gun. Guglielmo sends the signal, and shortly afterwards he hears the gunshot. It works!
However, Guglielmo Marconi’s transmission is no world first. Nikola Tesla had already sent a radio signal 80km up the American Hudson River, from New York to West Point, the year before. But the Marconi family is thrilled with their son’s achievement and tries to interest the Italian mail and telegraph company in the invention. When this is unsuccessful, mother and son go to England, where they use their connections to develop interest in Guglielmo Marconi’s device.
Tesla must dig trenches
While Guglielmo Marconi is born rich, Nikola Tesla, who is 18 years older, must fight his way through life. He was born in Austria-Hungary as the son of a Serbian priest, and after a single year in a university in Prague, the family’s money runs dry. Tesla gives up his studies and moves to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company, the European arm of Thomas Edison’s energy company.
In 1884, Tesla emigrates to the US, taking with him a recommendation to Edison himself from one of his superiors in Paris, Charles Batchelor: “Dear Edison. I know two great men, and you are one of them. The other one is this young man.”
The introduction was successful, and Tesla cooperates closely with Edison until wage disagreements see Tesla leaving in anger to found his own energy company. He works hard, and ideas keep coming. On the other hand, he has no talent for business. His progress stalls for want of money, and soon, the genius is forced to dig trenches at a pay of US$2 a day.
Luckily, a rich sponsor spots Tesla and helps him, so he can continue his radio experiments. In 1898, he demonstrates a remote-controlled boat to an amazed audience at Madison Square Garden, and he develops ideas for radio-controlled weapons which are not realised until 50 years later.
Marconi steals Tesla’s patents
Back in England, young Marconi’s substantial fortune and influential connections quickly bring success. In 1897, he takes out a patent for his radio in Britain, although it corresponds closely to a device that Nikola Tesla described in an article from 1893. A few years later when Marconi tries to patent the same equipment in the US, he is turned down due to Tesla’s patents, although Marconi claims he knows nothing of Tesla’s ideas.
The major public breakthrough comes in 1899, when he manages to send a radio telegram across the English Channel. The young Italian presents well as a great inventor and garners extensive press coverage. In 1901, when he receives his trans-Atlantic signal, his fame is assured.
The ultimate victory comes in 1904, when, for reasons unknown, the Ameri
can patent office changes its mind and recognises Marconi as the inventor of wireless radio telegraphy.
Tesla dies before recognition
Nikola Tesla fights in vain to gain recognition for his contribution to the invention of the radio, and becomes increasingly eccentric, with contemporaries describing him with decidedly mixed praise as a “gifted madman” and as “a medieval practitioner of black arts.” Although he usually keeps quiet publicly on his frustrations, one time he blurts out: “Mr Marconi is a donkey!”
Finally, in 1943, the US Supreme Court establishes that it was indeed Nikola Tesla who was the first to invent the radio, and that Marconi had lied when he claimed that he knew nothing about Tesla’s scientific articles.
But neither adversary ever hears the verdict. Marconi dies of a stroke in 1937, aged 63. The hardy Nikola Tesla lives on to be 86 years old. But he dies alone in a hotel room in January 1943 – just nine months before the Supreme Court finally gives him the credit for his invention of the radio.