A top nobleman studies physics crazily and becomes a "radio wizard"?

He was a top second-generation rich man since he was young, and lived in a Baroque palace since he was born;

He never attended a formal school, but was fascinated by science and devoted his life to the field of global communications;

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics when he was less than 40 years old, but 34 years later, the US Supreme Court declared his patent invalid and determined that Nikola Tesla had the patent for radio;

He has traveled to Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and his circle of friends is broad and complex, with close ties to the Catholic Church, the British government, the American telecommunications industry, the German scientific community, European colonialism, the international news media, and even fascism...

Such a person not only has a wealthy family, but also has a strong legendary color. Although he is extremely smart, he has always been an "outsider" in various groups. He is our protagonist today, the "Father of Radio" - Guglielmo Marconi.

Guglielmo Marconi Image source: Wikipedia

Marconi is a truly world-class figure in the field of modern communications, not just because he was the first person to communicate globally, but because he was the first person to think about communications globally, and his discoveries changed the world today. But he was also a complex character, sometimes heroic, sometimes despicable, and full of legendary stories.

This book, Guglielmo Marconi, reviews his legendary life and adds unpublished archives and field investigation materials from four countries and multiple languages. The author wants to tell us that Marconi's life and achievements do not belong only to Italy. His imagination and inventions transcend time, and the world today and we still live in his creations.

The following excerpt is from "The Life of Guglielmo Marconi" with some omissions

What we think of as a global networked media and communications system originated in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, when, for the first time, information was transmitted across vast distances in the form of electronic signals. The telegraph, telephone and radio were the forerunners to the internet, iPods and cell phones, although many areas of early electronic communications and their impact on the way we live were still unexplored and unthought of.

The connection between technological innovation and the contemporary capitalist business model is one aspect, the role of government management as a medium for comprehensive technological mediation of social interaction is another aspect. The relationship between national sovereignty, colonialism, imperialism and transnational management mechanisms is another perspective.

All of this can be traced back to Marconi, and his story becomes the starting point for our thinking. From 1896, when Marconi applied for his first patent in England at the age of 22, to 1937, when he died in Italy, every major innovation in electronic communication technology during this period was centered on Marconi.

While Marconi is best known in the popular mind as the "inventor of radio," his contributions as an inventor were more limited than is commonly believed, and these have long been the subject of intense debate. Marconi certainly made some of the most significant advances in radio communications, but he was also a capable and sophisticated organizer, unlike his competitors. As an entrepreneurial inventor, he was an expert in corporate strategy, media relations, government lobbying, international diplomacy, patents, and litigation, and his abilities as an entrepreneur were indisputably superior to those of his competitors.

Marconi was really interested in only one thing: extending mobile, personal, and long-distance communications to the ends of the earth (and beyond, if we are to believe some reports). Some would call Marconi a genius, even if his genius lay only in his imagination.

Guglielmo Marconi Image source: Wikipedia

It was here, at Griffinney Manor, that he began experimenting with sending signals over the hills in 1895. Some would say that was talent.

If it wasn’t talent, it was at least a lot of unbridled courage and imagination that enabled him to successfully send a signal across the Atlantic from Cornwall to Newfoundland in 1901, despite scientists saying it was impossible.

In 1924, he persuaded the British government to scrap a plan to surround the world with a string of radio stations and replace it with his latest technology, shortwave radio communications. The Pope was a friend of Marconi, but he did not trust Benito Mussolini, another of Marconi's benefactors.

So in 1931, Marconi created the world's first international radio service for the Pope, delivering unfiltered messages from the Vatican to the faithful. Some say that in the development of commercial broadcasting, Marconi lost his temper and failed to see that radio could or would go to the extreme of frivolity and boredom.

In one of his later public speeches, in March 1937, he denounced radio as a one-sided means of communication and predicted that it would turn in the other direction, that communication would become a means of exchange. What a gift of prophecy!

Marconi’s career was characterized, as Malcolm Gladwell put it in his 2011 New York Times article about the computer mouse, as “the evolution of an idea.” Marconi’s idea was about long-distance, point-to-point communication, and his career was devoted to making that communication happen cheaply, efficiently, seamlessly, and, if you will, elegantly, because it was intuitive, uncomplicated, and, yes, human, for the user.

There is a direct link between Marconi and today's social media, namely search engines, program flow, and an admittedly provocative interjection: the 20th century does not exist. In a sense, Marconi's imagination and vision transcended his time and saw directly into our present.

The Biography of Guglielmo Marconi

Author: [Canada] Marc Raboy