Peter Simmons, age 13, of Twin Falls, Ida., for his question:
WHO WAS MARCONI?
An Italian physicist and inventor named Guglielmo Marconi was the man who made the first practical wireless telegraph. He was born more than 100 years ago, in 1874, in Balogna, Italy. As a very young boy he was very interested in electricity and physics.
As a student at the University of Bologna, Marconi worked with a professor named o Righi who had been studying electromagnetic waves. Marconi came up the idea that perhaps these waves could carry messages from one place to another.
In 1895, when he was 21 years old, Marconi succeeded in sending messages a distance of one mile. He then discovered that he could send messages farther with a higher serial.
The Italian government wasn't interested in Marconi's idea, so he went to England. There he took out the first patent for wireless telegraphy through the use of electrical waves.
After his success fn England, representatives of the Italian government invited him back. He sent messages from Spezia to an Italian warship 12 miles out at sea.
Marconi's Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co., Limited, opened in London in 1897, using Marconi's patents. A year later he was sending messages from a lighthouse on the mainland to a lightship 12 miles out in the English Channel.
Marconi continued to improve his equipment and in 1901 he sent his first wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean from Cornwall, England, to St. John's, Newfoundland. And by 1902 he was dispatching and receiving messages as far as 2,000 miles. He increased that to 8,000 miles when he and a helper transmitted signals from Ireland to Argentina in 1910.
Marconi started a regular news service between England and the United States for the London Times in 1903.
In 1907 Marconi started a transatlantic wireless service for public use. Then during World War II, from 1914 until 1918, he was in charge of wireless equipment for the Italian forces.
Marconi discovered that short waves could be sent greater distances with less power than long waves. Also, he invented the beam aerial system that sends signals in one direction. The beam concentrates the signal and makes it stronger.
Most long range radio communications today depend on short waves and the directed beam.
Marconi and a man named Karl Ferdinand Braun were awarded the Nobel prize in physics fn 1909. Then in 1929 he received the title of Marchese or Marquis. The next year he became president of the Royal Italian Academy.
Marconi died in 1937 at the age of 63.