Secrets of Guglielmo Marconi. Who invented the radio: Marconi or Popov? What is the most famous invention of Guglielmo Marconi?

One of the inventors of radio, along with the Russian scientist A.S. Popov is considered to be the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, who patented radiotelegraphy - a system for exchanging information using radio waves. But few people know that during his lifetime this man was a sincere supporter of the fascist Duce Benito Mussolini.

Prodigy and inventor

The son of a large landowner from Bologna, Guglielmo Marconi was interested in radio engineering from childhood. Apparently, he was a child prodigy, so at the age of 13 he already became a student at the Technical Institute in Livorno. Reading the works of Heinrich Hertz and Nikola Tesla, the young man tried to independently conduct experiments on establishing communication using electromagnetic waves. The experiments were successful: in 1895, 21-year-old Marconi was the first to transmit a wireless signal over a three-kilometer distance. After this, the young man approached the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs with a proposal to use wireless communications. But there they brushed him aside.

Then Guglielmo decided to leave for the UK. The year was 1896. The young radio technician demonstrated to specialists the operation of his device by sending a signal using Morse code from the roof of the London Post Office to another building located one and a half kilometers from the post office. This time Marconi was luckier. The invention interested the then director of the British Post and Telegraph V.G. Prisa, and he offered cooperation to the young inventor.

On September 2, 1896, Marconi's invention was first demonstrated to the general public. The experiment took place on Salisbury Plain. The transmitter was a modified Hertz generator, and the receiver was an improved Popov device. This time the radiogram was transmitted over a distance of three kilometers.

In July 1897, Marconi finally managed to patent his invention. In addition, he created the joint-stock company Marconi and Co. The company's shares were purchased by many prominent scientists and engineers of the time. That same summer, Guglielmo and his team were able to transmit radio signals across Bristol Bay over a distance of 14 kilometers. In October, the signal was transmitted over a distance of 21 kilometers. In November of the same year, the first stationary radio station appeared on the Isle of Wight, which communicated with the mainland at a distance of 23 kilometers.

In 1900, Marconi patented a radio tuning system. Soon the first wireless telegraph was opened in Chelmsford.

In December 1901, a radio signal crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and by the end of 1902 regular transatlantic radio communications were established. In 1905, Marconi and his colleagues received a patent for directional communication.

Marconi did not rest on this. In 1932 he was able to establish microwave radiotelephone communications for the first time, and in 1934 he demonstrated how they could be used for navigation on the high seas.

Marconi and Mussolini

Already in adulthood, Guglielmo returned to his homeland - Italy. By that time, his merits were appreciated. Back in 1909, Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1914 he was offered the post of senator, which he gladly accepted, and in 1919 he acted as the plenipotentiary representative of Italy at the Paris Peace Conference. During the First World War, Marconi, being drafted into the army, was involved in providing military radio service.

Mussolini's rise to power only benefited Marconi's career. The famous inventor actively welcomed the new regime and in 1923 joined the National Fascist Party. This was noticed. In 1930, the Duce invited Guglielmo to head the Royal Academy of Italy. Thanks to this, he entered the Great Fascist Council, which by that time served as the main governing body in the state.

Give me contact with the Martians!

What contributed to such a sharp rise in the career of the radio inventor? Legend has it that one day, while talking with the Duce, Marconi mentioned that with the help of radio signals it would be possible in the future to communicate with the inhabitants of other planets.

Absurd, you say? But the fact is that in the 20s of the last century the theme of Martians was very fashionable. Even in the USSR, lectures were actively given on the topic of whether there is life on Mars... Some venerable scientists seriously argued that a highly developed civilization could theoretically live on the Red Planet. And since Mars is an older planet than Earth, its inhabitants may have a level of development much higher than ours. So cooperation with them can be very useful for us, earthlings.

This is what Mussolini was counting on. He asked Marconi to quickly begin work on establishing contact with aliens.

A few years later, a mysterious object was observed in the sky over Italy. Drawings depicting him even ended up in the official archives. Meanwhile, Mussolini decided that it was a flying machine of the Martians who arrived at the meeting at the request of Marconi, who sent them his signals!

The Duce even issued a number of orders that ordered the military and special services to provide all possible assistance to Martian ships landing on Italian territory. And in 1933, the landing of an unidentified flying object in the north of the country was officially documented. Conspiracy theorists believe that it was an alien ship whose crew met with Mussolini. They say that the humanoids suggested that the Duce unite with Nazi Germany...

Of course, all these are nothing more than legends. And it is unlikely that Marconi could really contribute to the Duce’s contacts with the Martians.

It is unknown what would have happened to Marconi if ​​he had survived World War II. But on July 20, 1937, the “father of radio” died at the age of 63. The story of his life is further proof that talent has nothing to do with political beliefs.

Russia and the West have different opinions on this matter

The wireless transmission of the first telegraph signals at the end of the 19th century marked the beginning of a process that, 20 years later, resulted in the appearance of radio and radio stations. If we turn to the background of what resulted in this invention of epoch-making significance, it will hardly be surprising that the right to be called its author is given to two scientists - the Italian Guglielmo Marconi and Aleksandr Stepanovich Popov. At the end of the 19th century, there was a belief that physics was a science about which everything was already known, and that there was no point in looking for something fundamentally new in it. Therefore, gifted school graduates were discouraged from studying physics. Since at that time there was no sign of the revolution that quantum theory and the theory of relativity were to bring with them at the beginning of the new century, researchers concentrated their efforts on the further development of fundamental physics on an already existing basis.

Heinrich Hertz as a pioneer

This was a time when scientists were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm caused by James Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics, developed in 1864. Maxwell theoretically proved that there must be waves in space that travel at the speed of light, and he predicted many of their properties. Maxwell's theory soon became one of the foundations of physics. Professor from Karlsruhe Heinrich Hertz invented equipment to send and receive such waves, which confirmed the correctness of Maxwell's predictions regarding their properties.

It is clear that physicists working at the most famous universities in the world reacted with great interest to the results that Hertz published in 1886, and his experiments were an important topic of conversation among colleagues. It also goes without saying that fellow specialists from physical institutes repeated Hertz’s experiments and then improved the equipment. And the idea that the waves produced in this way could be used as a message carrier was inevitable. The great economic importance which both the telegraph and the telephone had already acquired led to the conclusion, which lay almost on the surface, that the wireless transmission of messages could be of great benefit. The discovery, so to speak, was in the air.

The son of a village priest, Alexander Stepanovich Popov (1859-1906), initially intended to become a priest. But he soon developed other interests; he entered St. Petersburg University, where he graduated with honors in the department of mathematics. After this he intended to pursue an academic career. One day, he soon developed an interest in electrical engineering, in which more and more new discoveries were appearing. In this regard, he visited the Naval School in Kronstadt (located in the vicinity of St. Petersburg), where he became an instructor in the care of electrical equipment of warships.

In the school library, he found the works of Heinrich Hertz, which interested him greatly. He repeated Hertz's experiments and soon tried to transmit the waves thus obtained over long distances. In 1986, he demonstrated his experiments to the St. Petersburg Physical Society, transmitting signals using Morse code inside the university building. However, he did not continue research in this direction, but turned to research on X-rays recently discovered in Germany. However, in September 1896, he learned from the newspapers that Marconi had received a patent. In this regard, he was forced to return again to Hertzian waves. In cooperation with the Russian navy, he managed to transmit a signal 10 kilometers, and a year later - 50 kilometers.

Belated recognition of Popov's discovery

Popov received surprisingly little recognition for his pioneering work. Only half a century later, when the Soviet Union had a heightened sense of self-esteem thanks to its victory over Nazi Germany, did they begin to emphasize the fact that the real inventor of radio was Alexander Popov. That he conducted his main research in St. Petersburg. On May 7, 1945, a celebration took place at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow to mark the 50th anniversary of the invention of radio. It was attended by the most senior leaders of the party and army, as well as Popova’s daughter. A special postage stamp was issued with his portrait and the inscription: “Popov, inventor of radio.” It was decided to celebrate May 7th as “Radio Day” in the future. But this decision was soon forgotten again.

Almost at the same time, Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was working on the same problem in Italy. He studied physics at the Technical School in Livorno, where he learned about the results obtained by Heinrich Hertz. In 1984, he repeated Hertz's experiments in the laboratory. He soon realized the possibility of sending messages, and in the same year he managed to transmit a message over a distance of two kilometers. Since in Italy there was little interest in his research, and primarily from the military, he left for London in 1986, where he continued his work. Already in the same year he managed to transmit a message over a distance of 10 kilometers. He received patents for his various inventions and founded the Marconi Wireless and Telegraph Company.

Marconi makes the possible out of the impossible

In December 1901, that is, 100 years ago, he began his main experiment and succeeded in transmitting a signal across the Atlantic. At the same time, there was a transmitter in Cornville, at the westernmost point of England, and a receiving station in Newfoundland. The result of the experiment was perceived in all industrial countries as a sensation of the highest standard. Scientists, primarily Poincare, the lord of French physics, in particular, convincingly proved that waves can circle the globe only under external influence, and therefore their propagation range cannot exceed several hundred kilometers. The fact that the Earth is surrounded by an ionosphere, which can reflect waves, was not yet known.

The Russian Popov, unlike Marconi, was unable to continue his developments. Since Popov’s invention did not receive commercial application, it ended up in a completely different economic plane. At the turn of the century, industry developed extremely dynamically in Western Europe. The supply of electrical energy acquired new proportions, the railway network expanded, enterprising entrepreneurs everywhere hunted for inventions that could bring in money, and there was an abundance of capital to invest in risky projects. Since all this did not exist in Russia, Popov soon turned to other things.

Another question is why radio was noticed and appreciated commercially in Europe and not in the United States. Finding the answer is not easy. It is always difficult to determine why this or that was not done. One reason could be that technological renewal in the United States took place under the exclusive influence of the ideological wealth of Thomas Edison. He occupied a special position among the inventors of his time. He gave the world more important inventions than anyone else. Of course, Edison knew about the work of Heinrich Hertz. However, it seems that Edison did not consider as a priority those areas of physics that later became the foundation of electronics. Who is the true inventor of radio? Sources indicate that Popov demonstrated the wireless transmission of understandable signals in March 1986 and that Marconi did the same a few months earlier, albeit in the absence of the public and specialists. What conclusion can be drawn from this? In principle, the fact that someone else, without knowing it, at the same time in another place invented the same thing, does not detract from the significance of the creative achievement of the inventor. Therefore, Popov’s achievement deserves absolute recognition. The question of priority in terms of obtaining a patent for an invention does not arise, since Popov did not file any applications for its receipt. However, for subsequent generations, the decisive thing is who put the idea into practice, and this merit, without a doubt, belongs to Guglielmo Marconi, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

All comments

• 10:53 17.08.2010 | 4

  Merkulov

  THE TRUTH ABOUT G. MARCONI IS HIDING IN SWITZERLAND Academicians, professors, associate professors, directors of research institutes, engineers, state laureates were active in praising Marconi (1874-1937) around the world and in Russia. awards, journalists and historical writers. They tried! In addition to publications in magazines and newspapers, their erudition and right-wing views on the authorship of the invention of radio were carried into encyclopedias and even into educational curricula. The farce and comedy of the situation lies, however, in the fact that the scientists who opened the ideological company did not see or get acquainted with the own works of the alien star. Reading the works of Russian “new” cosmopolitans shows that their actual knowledge about the idol consists of the phrase: “Oh, Marconi is the head!” - similar to the expression of the provincial “pique vests” in the famous novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov “The Golden Calf” �. In his youth, Marconi dreamed of becoming a sailor-captain. But he couldn’t cope with his studies at school. Started studying at home. Still, he failed the entrance exams to the Italian Naval Academy. The next year he failed to enter the civilian University of Bologna. That's where I finished my education. Thanks to private physics classes with his neighbor, the famous Italian scientist A. Rigi (1850 - 1921), Marconi became interested in experiments on the wireless transmission of electrical signals. Due to his lack of education and lack of experience working with equipment, he was unlikely to be able to come up with anything in physics with his own head and do it with his hands. In his memoirs, Marconi recalls that in the summer of 1895, the first receiving and transmitting installation on his parents’ estate (like a toy) was assembled by three civil engineers from Bologna under the methodological guidance of A. Riga, using his father’s money. Subsequently, none of them confirmed the success of the young technology enthusiast in transmitting high-frequency electromagnetic oscillations. In his autobiographies, Marconi does not report his appeals to scientific and technical journals and the Italian patent office with proposals to publish the contents of his work, or to register primacy in their implementation. Marconi went to London, England to escape conscription into the army. On March 31, 1896, he was introduced to an aristocrat of blue blood and the head of the British telegraph department, V. Preece (1834 - 1913). There is a version that Preece, after familiarizing himself with Marconi’s fantasies, sketches and components, asked the technical service of the British Navy to examine and test the brought instruments. There, under the leadership of Captain G. Jackson (1855-1929) from the Mine Officer School, a future famous admiral, equipment for significant demonstrations was installed. Marconi showed the public the first working transmitter in July 1896 with a range of 400 m. The receiver was a device copied from the laboratory models of the Frenchman E. Branly (1844 - 1940) and the Englishman O. Lodge (1851 - 1940). Preece, Jackson and Marconi, being familiar with the configuration of the device of A.S. Popov (1859 - 1906), at first did not understand its significance. Only in the spring of 1897 did they “realize” that it was planned to receive meaningful telegraph messages by air using the scheme of a Russian engineer. They tested a receiving-transmitting system (RTS) based on Popov's device in May 1897 on the English Bristol Channel. Success in the tests turned Pris's head. On June 4, 1897 (Friday evening), Preece made a report at an extraordinary meeting of the British Royal Institute (analogous to the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences) convened by him, outlining the results achieved. The British magazine “The Electrician” published the text of the report and the teaching staff diagram on June 11, 1897. G. Marconi subsequently proved himself to be a successful manager, organizer of experiments and mass production of radio equipment. However, his level of knowledge in physics remained low. Already in adulthood, he did not distinguish diffraction from refraction; at the age of 50 (1924), he argued that short waves travel around the world 100 times faster than long waves (www.radio.ru/archive/1924/01). A relatively successful assessment of Marconi was given by the English science fiction engineer and writer A. Clark (1917 - 2008): “He was not in the full sense an inventor. The idea was in the air. Even before it, test transmissions of messages over short distances took place. But it was Marconi who played a huge role in the spread of radio, as he was the first to realize its importance. He founded a commercial organization to introduce radio and made the first transatlantic transmission (1902), which many scientists considered impossible due to the curvature of the earth's surface.

• 11:05 17.08.2010 | 3

  Merkulov

• 11:06 17.08.2010 | 3

  Merkulov

  WHAT RADIO DID MARCONI INVENT? (JUDGE FOR YOURSELF!) The first patent of G. Marconi No. 12039 dated 07/02/1897 “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals and in Apparatus therefor” ) was hidden for more than 100 years. A tangle of ideas vegetated like Elusive Joe. Many people heard about him and sighed. But no one really wanted to explore (“catch”) him. For all that, he is revered as the “highest intimate” among the “generals” from the world and Russian history of the science of radio communications. In laudatory publications and reports on Marconi's affairs, thousands of authors expressed admiration and endless affection for the title of the document. If these delights could be converted into energy without loss, it would be enough to power radio stations around the world. However, to the “ear” of a practicing engineer, the name “sounds” ordinary, moreover, without indicating the “transmission” technology - wired or wireless. According to the text of the document (see on the Web), “improvements” are understood as the author’s exotic intentions to distribute electromagnetic waves not only through the air, but also through land and water; under “equipment for this” – devices that implement the idea, with their diagrams and descriptions. There are other outlandish “lyrical sketches”: – “when transmissions (EMW) go through earth or water, I connect one end of the tube or contact (detector) to the ground, and the other ends to preferably similar conductors, isolated from the ground, or plates in the air"; - “this (reception of electromagnetic waves) can be achieved by connecting the ends of the sensitive tube (detector) to two ground electrodes located at some distance from each other along the line of arrival of the oscillations. These connections cannot be sufficiently conductive, therefore they must contain a capacitor of suitable capacity with a plate area of ​​0.83 sq.m (with a dielectric in the form of paraffin paper)"; - “with modifications of the above devices it is possible to transmit signals not only through relatively small obstacles, such as brick walls, trees, etc., but also across or through masses of metal, or hills, or mountains, which may be located between the transmitting and receiving instruments.” The descriptive part of patent No. 12039 is placed on many pages. The capabilities of the forum do not allow us to fully examine the physical absurdities of the document of protection. For example, the need to install selection structural elements in the receiving part of the PPS in the absence of such in the transmitting part, and many others. The basic scheme of the PPS with reflective antennas for over-the-air communications given in the patent did not go into practice. Marconi's pseudoscientific attempts to supplement science with new “discoveries” indicate serious gaps in his knowledge of physics and electrical engineering. At the time of filing the patent application (12039), the applicant for the invention of radio had not carried out experimental work. If he carried them out, he would quickly become convinced that high-frequency electrical vibrations do not pass through earth and water, but when propagating through the air they are reflected from metal masses (plates). P.S.: After 2004, the text and illustrations of document 12039 by G. Marconi were published. However, no one in the world has yet managed to obtain a certified copy of the patent materials with the BBP seal.

• 11:10 17.08.2010 | 2

  Merkulov

  OBVIOUS – INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY RADIO G. MARCONI IN 1901 With glorifications of Marconi, foreign and Russian “scientific” observers raise doubts about their own qualifications. For example! On December 12, 1901, at 12.30 pm, Marconi climbed to the highest point of Signal Hill near St. John's on Newfoundland Island in Canada. Here he tried, through the earpiece of a simple detector receiver, to make out three telegraph points of the letter “S”, transmitted to him on a wave of 366 m from England (Poldew). I heard atmospheric discharges. But he told everyone that he heard the dots. In the absence of witnesses! In his memoirs he wrote that in the USA, A. Bell (1847-1922) and N. Tesla (1856-1943) expressed support for his experiment. In fact, Bell said, "I doubt Marconi did it. It's impossible." Tesla even considered Marconi to be a narrow-minded swindler and a charlatan, who also stole 17 patents from him; He also said that he himself conducts sessions of biological communication with Mars. In Europe, famous scientists also did not believe in the event, among them the Englishmen O. Lodge, W. Preece - former chief. British telegraph engineer and mentor (“father”) Marconi and others. They suggested that in Canada, rather, Marconi heard “dots” of thunderstorm lightning discharges. The failure sobered Marconi, and he began to do what he should have done right away - listening to signals of electromagnetic oscillations as he slowly moved across the sea from the transmitter at Poldew. Two months later, in February 1902, while sailing from England to America on the ship Philadelphia, Marconi was already testing communications and learned that during the day EMWs do not travel even a third of the way between continents (3500 km), but at night they are transported over long distances . Marconi did not abandon his initial statement about transoceanic signal reception. He insisted on it in the Nobel report of 1909. Later, scientists studied that the phenomenon of long-range propagation of electromagnetic waves is explained by their reflections from the electrical layers of the ionosphere in the dark. In 1941, a shepherd in the famous film “The Pig Farmer and the Shepherd” sang to the pig farmer: “The radio waves will rush in at night!” According to the laws of physics, the event of December 12, 1901 could not have happened. Apart from Marconi's oral statements, there is no corroboration of the case. His promoters, the “fathers of radio,” are filled with adoration for the hero—in 2001, the 100th anniversary of the unique adventure of the 20th century was celebrated everywhere. in the history of science. After 18 months The British BBC in Poldew opened "The New Marconi Centre" - a museum in memory of the play of imagination (and the stock exchange) of G. Marconi. This is how Marconi himself described the events of December 1901 in his memoirs. : The first points of the letter "S" from the 25 kW transmitter from England arrived in Canada on December 12. at 12.30 (at 17.30 – UK time); he received signals “by ear” from a receiver with an insensitive mercury detector, not equipped with printing on paper tape; the next day at noon I heard the dots again, but with less consistency; 14 Dec. It was not possible to work because a strong wind blew away the inflatable balloon that was lifting the antenna wire; by the evening of December 15. he had a letter from the Anglo-American Telegraph Company (AATC), where the legal adviser said that Marconi would be prosecuted for violating the company's exclusive rights to transoceanic telegraph messages; on the same day, Marconi notified the press of his success in one-way transmission of a semantic signal from England to Canada. None of the curious engineers and journalists managed to hear the “hello” sent from England. Marconi did not agree to ignore the AATC ban. Let us recall that since biblical times it has been customary to consider any case factual if there are documents or testimony of at least three witnesses. It is obvious that Marconi arrived in Canada not in order to receive a letter “S” from England, but in anticipation of receiving a more serious, rather congratulatory text, etc. However, communication did not work out. Like an experienced gambler in a bad game, he put on a “good face” and bluffed. He stated that he heard telegraph points. In English according to S. Morse code, one dot means the letter “E”, two dots - “I”, three dots - “S”. To make people more credible, he announced that he had heard sets of dots of the letter "S". It was difficult to refute this formally in 1901. Atmospheric interference in the form of many dots is quite often heard in the receiver's earphone. Marconi did not return to repeat the experiment of 1901. By mid-1902 he increased the transmitter power. He achieved success in establishing wireless communications between Europe and America at the end of 1907 at a wavelength of 3660 m and in the dark. The technology was borrowed from the American engineer R. Fessenden, who in 1906 immediately implemented two-way communication between continents (at night) (www.ieee.ca/millennium/radio/differences.htm). In the middle of the day (12.30) and now in Canada, even modern receivers with amplification cannot be tuned to receive broadcasts from powerful broadcasting centers in England. And vice versa. In Moscow during the day on medium wave you will also not be able to hear less distant stations from near and far abroad.

• 11:13 17.08.2010 | 2

  Merkulov

  A.S. POPOV WAS RECOGNIZED AS THE INVENTOR OF RADIO IN THE USA The President of AT&T (American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Co), Dr. G. Goering, wrote on August 30, 1901 in the newspaper “The North American” in an address to A.S. Popov: “We, without a doubt, recognize your rights to be considered the real inventor of the first wireless device presented to the whole world, and Marconi with his claims appears to the whole world as an imitator of the creative train of thought of the genius of Professor Popov.” On December 30, 1901, in the same place, Goering told A.S. Popov: “We are trying to place you in the ranks of those people to whom you belong, and soon the whole country (USA) will work under your name as the discoverer of practical modern wireless telegraphy.” During the Second World War in 1943, the magazine "Wireless World" in its August issue published an article "Pioneers of Radio Communications" (author - Field D.A.), where he wrote: "In the spring of 1890 A.S. .Popov introduced marine specialists to the work of Hertz and demonstrated to listeners through several experiments the possibility of transmitting signals using the “Hertz beam.” This happened before Huber, Crookes, Tesla, Righi and Marconi made similar proposals.” “It would be quite correct to say that Popov, without anyone’s help (except Hertz), discovered and published ways and means of using electromagnetic waves for communication.” By the way, in April 1947, the Australian Journal of Science published an article “About the inventor of radio communications.” It noted: “We have examined the circumstances at our disposal that allow us to come to a correct judgment on the issue of Popov’s priority over Marconi. These facts inevitably lead to the conclusion that Marconi was not the inventor of radio communications.” In the American (USA) version of the British magazine “Radio World”, published with funds from the Marconi Co company, in June 1947 there was a generalization: “There are no documents confirming that Marconi demonstrated telegraphy without wires earlier, than Popov." During the escalating years of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, military historians of the US Navy were asked the topic: “Who invented radio?” To study the issue, we used publicly published documents and information received from anonymous sources. In an official report released in 1963 and recently declassified (fecha.org/popov.htm), the Americans responded: “Radio was invented by the Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov.” A.S. Popov was the son of a priest, so historians considered the discovery of wireless communications to be the intervention of “God’s power,” and what he created in 1895 The first connected electrical device was a contraption. They called it an “Act of God” allowing A.S. Popov to “detect and register remote lightning strikes and receive telegraphic messages over the air in a similar way.” Hundreds of sailors and officers who suffered the accident of the warship General-Admiral Count Apraksin in the Baltic at the end of 1899 did not count on a quick return home and resigned themselves to the impending long captivity in the ice. The icebreaker "Ermak" that came out of the fog to help seemed to them a mirage; they later called the man who brought them salvation (A.S. Popov - Auth.) an angel. A.S. Popov did not count on making a profit from scientific affairs. According to Navy historians, “the self-proclaimed contender for the invention of wireless communications, the Italian G. Marconi, had no ideas in wireless telegraphy. He was only an enthusiastic entrepreneur of profitable sales of new equipment around the world.” Impressed by the widespread interest in the topic of the invention of radio, in Hollywood (USA), an episode with a crossword puzzle was deliberately inserted into the beginning of the 2007 film “The Bucket List,” which has nothing to do with the history of radio communications. The scene explains that the five-letter crossword puzzle string “inventor of radio” matches the answer “Tesla”, but “Marconi” does not. The hero of the film (J. Nicholson) was wrong. The correct answer is “Popov”! The American electrical engineer N. Tesla in the USA has his famous patent No. 613809 for “Remote control of a motor boat or torpedo,” i.e. he formalized the wireless transmission of informative signals via electromagnetic waves (without presenting samples of equipment for examination) in 1898, more than three years later than the famous speech of A.S. Popov on May 7, 1895 at a meeting of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society in St. St. Petersburg (with a demonstration of technical devices in action).

• 13:21 10.09.2010 | 0

  Merkulov

  THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF G. MARCONI SHOULD BE CELEBRATED IN 1949. In 1949, an invitation was received from Italy to the USSR for Soviet scientists to come there for the anniversary associated with the invention of radio. The Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences refused to participate in the celebrations on the occasion of Marconi’s 75th birthday. And one of the leading employees of the Institute of Philosophy innocently told on February 25, 1949 at an institute party meeting that “the Italian Academy of Sciences invited Marconi, the inventor of radio, to honor him, and everyone knows that radio was invented by our scientist Popov!” This outstanding employee was absolutely right! Because G. Marconi does not fit into the category of inventors, since he was poorly versed in physics (like a hedgehog in algebra, a girl said on one of the forums). But he was a successful entrepreneur in organizing experiments, manufacturing and distributing radio equipment. And also a prominent party leader. G. Marconi began his political career in 1914, becoming a senator in Italy. Initially accepted the ideology of fascism. In 1922 he joined the Italian National Fascist Party and became the best friend of its leader and “father” of fascism B. Mussolini (1883 - 1945). Subsequently, G. Marconi became a member of the Grand Council (Politburo) of the party. In 1926 he changed his religion (from Protestant to Catholic). In 1930, he became the elected President of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Italy, where he allegedly secretly prevented its recruitment by scientists of Jewish origin. G. Marconi supported all the political repressions of B. Mussolini, in 1935 he was a supporter of the seizure of Ethiopia (while traveling around the world he defended the position of Italy). G. Marconi died on July 20, 1937 at 03.45 at night from another attack of tonsillitis with heart complications (he smoked a lot). At 08.30 in the morning, B. Mussolini was the first official to show sadness on the occasion of his death. G. Marconi was placed in the coffin in the uniform of the President of the Academy of Sciences with the insignia of a Nazi member of the Grand Council. By order of B. Mussolini, G. Marconi was buried in a large mausoleum-bunker with fascist symbols in Sasso (17 km from Bologna), Italy, where he still rests surrounded by Nazi heroes of the Second World War (1939 - 1945 ) and associates of B. Mussolini. During the war, G. Marconi's favorite yacht Elettra fought on the side of the fascist coalition forces. Paradoxically, the yacht Eletra was crashed by an English bomber in the Mediterranean Sea in 1944. The Italians did not intend to restore the yacht after the war. For the 103rd anniversary of the birth of G. Marconi (1977), the remains of the ship's hull were cut into pieces for museums and sales. Of course, Russian academics could not afford to attend the celebrations in Italy in April 1949. It would have been more correct to send there figures similar to G. Marconi in organizational abilities, who also had no training in physics. For example, Beria L.P. (1899 - 1953) – curator of the “Atomic Project” in the USSR, Kaganovich L.M. (1893 - 1991) – organizer of the construction of the metro, Likhachev I.A. (1896 - 1956) - the initiator of the automobile industry, and many others. True, unlike G. Marconi, authoritative personalities of the Soviet era did not declare themselves “inventors” and “fathers” of the scientific and technical areas that they led. To what extent is the recollection of the anniversary of G. Marconi in 1949 in the Russian media relevant to the discussion of the issue of priority in the invention of radio. The answer is none!

• 13:29 10.09.2010 | 1

  Merkulov

  A.S. POPOV DID NOT MET WITH G. MARCONI. In some Russian media, the film "Alexander Popov" (1949) has been harshly criticized, especially the scene of the meeting between radio inventor A.S. Popov (1859 - 1906) and Italian entrepreneur G. Marconi (1874 - 1937) on board a warship. It is difficult to explain why the authors of a work of fiction needed to include this episode in it. But overall the film turned out to be interesting and educational. Now excerpts from the film with subtitles in English. "scroll" on American YouTube (with a large number of views). The film was created in the year of A.S. Popov’s 90th birthday. In Europe and the USA they did not make a similar picture for the 75th anniversary of G. Marconi. After decades, the authors of articles and television programs with aplomb and confidence initiate an analysis of the dialogues and behavior of the characters in the film in the specified scene. Let us note that A.S. Popov, in a conversation with G. Marconi, rightly tells him, pointing to the device he uses: “This device... exactly repeats what I described in detail back in 1895... You shamelessly appropriated someone else’s invention. .! Science is not a screen for trade deals! " After failure to transmit a useful signal (the letter "S") across the Atlantic Ocean in December 1901, G. Marconi decided to first test the propagation of radio waves in the Atlantic (on the ship "Philadelphia" in February 1902), and then in Europe. In June 1902, he was allowed to install receiving and transmitting equipment on the cruiser "Carlo Alberto", which was cruising around Europe on the occasion of the coronation of the King of Italy. G. Marconi planned to receive signals from the modernized transmission center in Poldew (England). Due to the use of a new, but unreliable magnetic detector, long-range signal reception did not occur while the cruiser was in the Gulf of Finland and moored near the city of Kronstadt from July 12 to July 21. G. Marconi also failed to transmit semantic texts and greetings from the cruiser to Russian warships equipped with onboard equipment for receiving telegraph signals. In two autobiographies (“The story of my life” and “Wireless telegraphy, 1895 - 1919”) G. Marconi reports that when the Russian Emperor Nicholas II (1868 - 1918) visited the ship with his retinue, G. Marconi was able to demonstrate the transmission of dispatches from only one end of the cruiser to the other. The Emperor spoke with G. Marconi in English. The daughter of one of the admirals of the retinue asked why G. Marconi was in civilian clothes, while everyone around him was in military clothes and what he was doing here. G. Marconi does not report A’s visit. S. Popov warship. Trustworthy foreign biographers of G. Marconi do not write about this either. The domestic authors of the article write that the meeting between the radio inventor and the Italian businessman was invented by L. Solari: “A.S. Popov did not meet with G. Marconi and did not give him gifts” (see on the Web). Potentially, A.S. Popov and G. Marconi had the opportunity to communicate in Berlin at the “First World Conference on Wireless Telegraphy” held in 1903, at which they both attended and sat in the same meeting room. However, they did not meet or talk in person there either. At this meeting of advanced scientists and engineers, the Secretary of State (Minister) of the Postal Administration of Kaiser Germany, R. Kretke, spoke and said: “In 1895, Popov invented the reception of telegraph signals using Hertz waves. We must thank him for the first radiographic apparatus!” An artistic creation (film) has the right to free assumptions, documentary works do not. A legitimate question for the authors of articles and broadcasts is from what archival sources do they draw the “story” about the meeting between A.S. Popov and G. Marconi?

The site is an information, entertainment and educational site for all ages and categories of Internet users. Here, both children and adults will spend time usefully, will be able to improve their level of education, read interesting biographies of great and famous people in different eras, watch photographs and videos from the private sphere and public life of popular and eminent personalities. Biographies of talented actors, politicians, scientists, discoverers. We will present you with creativity, artists and poets, music of brilliant composers and songs of famous performers. Writers, directors, astronauts, nuclear physicists, biologists, athletes - many worthy people who have left their mark on time, history and the development of mankind are collected together on our pages.
On the site you will learn little-known information from the lives of celebrities; latest news from cultural and scientific activities, family and personal life of stars; reliable facts about the biography of outstanding inhabitants of the planet. All information is conveniently systematized. The material is presented in a simple and understandable manner, easy to read and interestingly designed. We have tried to ensure that our visitors receive the necessary information here with pleasure and great interest.

When you want to find out details from the biography of famous people, you often start looking for information from many reference books and articles scattered throughout the Internet. Now, for your convenience, all the facts and the most complete information from the lives of interesting and public people are collected in one place.
the site will tell in detail about the biographies of famous people who left their mark on human history, both in ancient times and in our modern world. Here you can learn more about the life, creativity, habits, environment and family of your favorite idol. About the success story of bright and extraordinary people. About great scientists and politicians. Schoolchildren and students will find on our resource the necessary and relevant material from the biographies of great people for various reports, essays and coursework.
Learning the biographies of interesting people who have earned the recognition of mankind is often a very exciting activity, since the stories of their destinies are as captivating as other works of fiction. For some, such reading can serve as a strong impetus for their own achievements, give them confidence in themselves, and help them cope with a difficult situation. There are even statements that when studying the success stories of other people, in addition to motivation to action, leadership qualities are also manifested in a person, fortitude and perseverance in achieving goals are strengthened.
It is also interesting to read the biographies of rich people posted on our website, whose perseverance on the path to success is worthy of imitation and respect. Big names from past centuries and today will always arouse the curiosity of historians and ordinary people. And we have set ourselves the goal of satisfying this interest to the fullest. If you want to show off your erudition, are preparing a thematic material, or are simply interested in learning everything about a historical figure, go to the site.
Those who like to read biographies of people can adopt their life experiences, learn from someone else’s mistakes, compare themselves with poets, artists, scientists, draw important conclusions for themselves, and improve themselves using the experience of an extraordinary person.
By studying the biographies of successful people, the reader will learn how great discoveries and achievements were made that gave humanity a chance to reach a new stage in its development. What obstacles and difficulties many famous artists or scientists, famous doctors and researchers, businessmen and rulers had to overcome.
How exciting it is to plunge into the life story of a traveler or discoverer, imagine yourself as a commander or a poor artist, learn the love story of a great ruler and meet the family of an old idol.
The biographies of interesting people on our website are conveniently structured so that visitors can easily find information about any desired person in the database. Our team strived to ensure that you liked the simple, intuitive navigation, the easy, interesting style of writing articles, and the original design of the pages.

Guglielmo Marconi is a short biography of the Italian radio engineer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1909.

Guglielmo Marconi biography briefly

The inventor was born in Bologna on April 25, 1874 in the family of a large landowner. He received his primary education at home, then entered a technical school in Livorno. At the age of 20, Marconi, having studied the works of Heinrich Hertz, as well as Nikola Tesla, became interested in the transmission of electromagnetic waves.

It took Guglielmo 40 years to implement the theory of wireless telegraphy. The scientist sought maximum efficiency and range of sound wave transmission. He used a vibrator and a Hertz detector to transmit the signal of a regular bell to the front door of his father's house, located on the opposite side of the lawn. In 1895, Marconi sent a wireless signal from his garden to a field over a distance of 3 km. Unfortunately, the Italian government did not show sufficient interest, so Guglielmo decided to move to England, where he hoped to find money for his scientific developments.

Gradually improving the warning system he himself invented, Guglielmo achieved signal transmission over a distance of 15 km.

In 1896, Marconi was drafted into the Italian army for 3 years; formally, he was listed as a cadet at the naval school at the Italian Embassy in London, but did not serve.

On July 2, 1897, he received a patent and on July 20 created and organized the Marconi Co. joint-stock company. Marconi invited many scientists and engineers to work at the company. In the summer of the same year, he transmitted radio signals over a distance of 14 km across Bristol Bay, and in October - over a distance of 21 km. In November of the same year, he built the first fixed radio station on the Isle of Wight, providing communication between the island and the mainland at a distance of 23 km. In May 1898, he first used a tuning system (on principles discovered the previous year by Oliver Lodge); patented it in 1900 (patent No. 7777). In the same year, he opened the first “wireless telegraph factory” in Chelmsford, employing 50 people.

At the end of 1901, Marconi established telegraph contact between points located at a distance of 300 km from each other, and received a return signal from across the Atlantic Ocean, 3380 km away.

The first transatlantic wireless communication service was opened by a scientist in 1907, and in 1909 Marconi, along with Brown, was awarded the Nobel Prize.

During the First World War, Guglielmo commanded the Italian Navy and led a program to provide the armed forces with wireless telegraphy. Since 1921, the physicist has been closely involved in the study of short-wave telegraphy, turning his own steam yacht into a working laboratory.

In 1932 he established the first radiotelephone microwave connection. In 1934 he demonstrated the possibility of using microwave telegraphy for navigation on the high seas.

He spent the last years of his life in Italy. After the rise of fascism, Marconi welcomed him and joined the Fascist Party in 1923.

Guglielmo Marconi personal life

In 1905, Marconi married Irishwoman Beatrice, they had three children, but they separated in 1924. He married an Italian countess for the second time in 1924, and soon the only daughter from this marriage was born.

Guglielmo Marconi: the man who received signals from Mars?

Marconi went down in history as the man who was the first to transmit information via “wireless telegraph” and established the foundations of the modern communication system. But probably few people know that at the very zenith of his fame, he claimed that he had detected radio signals coming from Mars, and even developed a device that made it possible to both pick up voices from the past and communicate with the souls of the dead.

Hardly anyone today remembers the date when NASA announced to the whole world the sensational news about fossilized traces on Mars - possible evidence of life that existed there, and the fact that Guglielmo Marconi and Nikola Tesla, who stood at the origins of modern radio communications, at the beginning of the 20th century, with the help of their radio receivers, detected what they without hesitation identified as signals from intelligent beings from the Red Planet. Then Marconi announced in the New York Times that, in his opinion, it was a message sent by a stellar civilization, which was picked up by the apparatus he invented...

The circumstances of Marconi's life and death are largely mysterious. And today, some researchers still continue to argue that his death in 1937 was nothing more than a staged act designed to hide the last stage of his life. And he allegedly lived in voluntary isolation in a secret city located in some place remote from the rest of the world in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle, where, together with a group of like-minded scientists, he developed the design of flying saucers driven by an anti-gravity engine based on the high potential of static electricity. In other words, he devoted the last years of his life to the creation of a secret super-technological civilization based on a new inexhaustible source of energy. Staying out of reach of energy companies, Marconi developed many alternative technologies that were once sacrificed to the interests of businessmen.

But let's start from the beginning. Guglielmo Marconi Jameson was born on April 25, 1874 in the Italian city of Bologna. The son of Giuseppe, a wealthy Italian landowner, and Annie, a simple Irish girl, already in his youth he showed a genuine passion for science and technology and at the age of twenty he reproduced Hertz’s experiments on the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and two years later, using Hertz’s apparatus, Popov’s antenna and Branly connector, carried out the first signal transmission over a distance of several hundred meters in Bologna. A little later, in 1896, he patented his invention.

From that moment on, his scientific and practical activities began to develop with dizzying speed. Finding no support in Italy, Marconi went to London, where the British government helped him finance the Signal Wireless Telegraph Company, which in 1900 became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. In 1901, the first wireless transmission was carried out between Europe (Cornwall) and America (Newfoundland), for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909, together with the German C. F. Brown.

Now he had no financial problems, and his research, every year, began to take on an increasingly mystical direction and, at the very end of his life, entered an area in which there was no place for the curious views of the world community.

He was elected president of the Royal Academy of Italy in 1930 and apparently died in Rome in 1937.

We repeat: “apparently.” Because some of his biographers claim that until his death he was secretly working on inventing a device to “record” voices from the past. According to those who continued his work, the genius was simply haunted by the idea of ​​hearing the last words of Jesus on the cross...

Already world-famous for his work on radio communications, Marconi, when asked by the New York Times whether he believed that airwaves were eternal, said: “Yes, I do. If messages that were sent 10 years ago have not yet reached the nearest stars, then why, when they get there, should they suddenly disappear? The newspaper published his statement on the front page of the January 20, 1919 issue.

At that time, having already earned honor and respect as a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (NET), he once said: “Contact with intelligence from other stars will one day become possible, and based on the fact that the planets of these star systems should be older than ours, then the creatures inhabiting them must have more information, which is of great value to us.” Marconi admitted that he was receiving strong signals from somewhere not from Earth, but, presumably, “from the stars.” But, being cautious and, moreover, anticipating criticism of his means of receiving these signals from his teacher, Nikola Tesla, and despite the fact that in that era young scientists such as Albert Einstein boldly declared that they believed in the possibility of habitability Mars and other planets, Marconi said he "does not have decisive evidence" of the specific origin of these signals. Subsequently, already confident of this, in an interview with the New York Times, which was published on September 2, 1921, he confirmed that, while sailing on his yacht in the Mediterranean Sea, he received some extraterrestrial signals that he could not decipher, although he suspected that they came from Mars.

Marconi's interest in interplanetary contacts peaked somewhat later, during a trip from Southampton (UK) to New York. The voyage took place from May 23 to June 16, 1922, on board his floating laboratory, the famous yacht Electra, which was purchased after the First World War from the Italian Navy. On it, in addition to doing other experiments, he spent a long time testing a device for receiving and transmitting signals passing through interplanetary space. However, what the results of the tests were, we do not know, because upon arrival in New York he did not want to talk about this topic either at the Institute of Radio Engineers or at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

A few years later, Marconi's interests shifted from radio communication with the stars to communication with other dimensions, and he set out to create a device capable of picking up voices from the past, as well as making contact with the world of the dead. Tesla's voice continued to ring in his ears: “We cannot say with certainty that some forms of life on other worlds do not develop here, very close to us ... and that we are not able to perceive the manifestations of their life activity.”

Marconi's reputation as a man of science was so high that during the confrontation between Mars and Earth - in 1924 - at the suggestion of David P. Todd, director of the Amherst College Observatory, all radio operators in the US armed forces were ordered to listen carefully for possible messages from Mars...

In the twenties, Marconi was so praised by the political forces led by Mussolini that, upon arriving in his homeland in 1930, he immediately became a member of the Great Fascist Council. Moreover, his acquaintances in the highest spheres of power turned out to be so influential that the Pope himself immediately allowed his personal question: annulled his marriage and allowed him to marry again, this time to Countess Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali, who soon bore him a daughter, who was named Electra.

In 1930, on board his naval laboratory, in collaboration with Landini, a famous Italian physicist, Marconi studied the theory of antigravity and the issue of wireless energy transmission. This topic was not at all original, because Tesla had already conducted experiments on it in the USA; It was he who sent waves across the Earth that caused a light bulb to turn on on the other side of the planet, in Australia.

In June 1936, Marconi gave a demonstration of a device based on the wave principle for the fascist dictator Mussolini; it could also be used as a defensive weapon. In those years, there was a lot of talk about such devices, they were called “death rays,” and one of them even appeared in the film of the same name by Boris Karlov. Marconi demonstrated the operation of his device on a high-density motorway located north of Milan. Mussolini himself asked his wife Raquel to leave on this highway at exactly three o'clock in the afternoon.

As soon as Marconi turned on his device, the electrical devices of all the cars on this road failed for a full half hour, including the car that belonged to the dictator’s wife. Her driver and all the other drivers checked the spark plugs and the amount of gasoline in the tanks in bewilderment. Half an hour passed and all the cars were able to move again. The most amazing thing about this story is that it even ended up in the published autobiography of Raquel Mussolini. Some say that the plot of the fifties film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was inspired by an incident that actually happened twenty years earlier by the “grace” of a brilliant scientist.

As one would expect, Mussolini paid attention to the demonstration of Marconi’s “paralyzing rays,” but they say that Pope Pius XI, having learned about this, advised the Duce to force Marconi to stop developing such devices, recognized by the Church as satanic, and even destroy all documents and calculations.

This, together with other failures associated with the dream of total control over world telecommunications, dealt a serious blow to Marconi's sick pride. A year after the events described, on July 20, 1937, he died under circumstances that many close friends - who were aware of his work and even had copies of documents related to it - found, to put it mildly, not entirely clear.

Didn’t Mussolini himself intervene in Marconi’s fate so that the inventor would not go further in his search? And perhaps it was not only a matter of fulfilling the pope’s order, but that the invention could fall into the hands of the enemy. Or maybe Marconi himself faked his death in order to escape the hands of the dictator and the pope, and headed on his yacht to the shores of South America? There were so many assumptions on this topic, including the most delusional ones, that there would be enough of them for an entire posthumous chapter to any of his many biographies.

According to one legend, a number of European scientists (according to one source - 98, including Landini) teamed up with Marconi in Latin America to create a city inside the crater of an extinct volcano, located somewhere in the jungle in southern Venezuela. One of them was Commander François Leve, one of those who is credited with authorship (under the pseudonym of the mysterious alchemist Fulcanelli) of the work “The Secret of the Cathedrals” and “The Philosophy of the Dwelling” and who, as Jacques Bergier tells in “The Return of the Magicians,” conveyed gave him some details of the recent discovery of atomic energy and warned about the serious danger posed to humanity by weapons based on its use. A few years after this, Leve disappeared without leaving a trace. It seems that he returned to a secret city, the construction of which was ensured by the large capital acquired by some of the participants in the project throughout their lives (the same Fulcanelli allegedly found no more and no less than the philosopher's stone, the key to obtaining gold of the purest purity and in unlimited quantities ), where he continued his work.

It is said that Leve, Marconi and their people worked on creating engines with unlimited energy and even disc-shaped ships driven by anti-gravity, based on the work of the Frenchman Marcel Paget and the American Thomas Townsend Brown.

It was also rumored that the reason for all the secrecy was the inability to carry out their work freely in a world where everything was controlled by energy companies - gas and oil - and bankers, as well as the military-industrial complex.

Writer and researcher Robert Charoux in his book “The Mystery of the Andes” assures that although the existence of the city cannot be confirmed by anything, the legend about it serves as the theme for many rumors that spread from Caracas to Santiago.

However, journalist Mario Rojas Abendaro, who studied all these rumors, came to the conclusion that the city is absolutely real - a conversation in Mexico with a physics professor from California named Narciso Genovese, an Italian by birth, who assured him that during lived for many years in this most lost corner in the middle of the Andes mountains. According to him, in the late 30s he wrote a controversial and little-known book called “My Journey to Mars,” which gained short-lived fame and was even republished in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, but was soon forgotten due to its obviously delusional content.

In the book, Genovese argued that this city was underground and that there were, at least at that time, much more funds for scientific research there than in any other place in the world. Since 1946, this city has been powered by cosmic energy, extracted in unlimited quantities from the earth's surface. The basis for the implementation of all these technical innovations was the theories of Marconi and Tesla. Moreover, since 1952, scientists of this city “were able to travel across the seas and continents on a ship (the energy source on it was practically inexhaustible), which could reach speeds of a million kilometers per hour, withstand enormous pressure and was limited in its movements only by the strength of materials , from which it was built. The whole problem with his driving was how to brake in time.”

But where was the city located? According to Genovesa, at an altitude of 4000 meters above sea level, in the mountainous jungle, hidden by dense vegetation, hundreds of kilometers from known roads. And this amazing story can be confirmed by the little study of the eastern part of the Andes chain - an area constantly covered by clouds, where there are many high peaks all the way from Venezuela to Bolivia.

Genovese assured that even flights to Venus and Mars were already possible at that time: on board those very “flying saucers” that plow the skies of these planets and appear from time to time in our sky. And who creates them? Aren't they students of Guglielmo Marconi and Nikola Tesla?