From Anthony Constable, Stephen Kaposi, Leonard Shaw and Gordon Fraser, Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman; European Laboratory for Particle Physics; European Organisation for Nuclear Research
As usual, the crucial date in establishing Gugliemo Marconi’s priority in the invention of radio is set at 2 June 1896, the date of his provisional patent (Forum, 20 May). For Aleksandr Popov, we are offered the highly contentious date of his sending the words “Heinrich Hertz” in Morse code on 24 March 1896 – a date conveniently “remembered” and tediously readjusted some 30 years after the event.
Like should be compared with like. If a merely remembered event is to be used for Popov, why not also for Marconi? His Italian years, as briefly described by Susan Aldridge, were well remembered without a delay of 30 years.
But, more to the point, Marconi’s documented claims do not commence on 2 June 1896. Under a slightly different title, his patent was first filed as early as 5 March 1896 and the title still survives as a journal entry. Marconi later acquired a letter of introduction to William Preece, Chief Engineer at the Post Office. This letter was signed by A. A. Campbell Swinton and is dated 30 March 1895. It clearly refers to Marconi’s system of telegraphy without wires, its use of Hertzian waves and its dependence on Oliver Lodge’s coherer. These authentic records have just as much historical importance as the official date of the provisional patent.
Aldridge’s lively summary of the Soviet attempt to rewrite the history of wireless telegraphy reminds us how political ideology misused a good scientist. Popov’s role is quite clear. He devised the first successful fully automatic coherer receiver in July 1895 and used it as a storm indicator. Because his “transmitter” consisted of lightning flashes some miles distant, he mistakenly assumed that much more energetic transmitters than those introduced by Hertz would be required for wireless telegraphy over similar distances. He and Oliver Lodge delayed applying their considerable knowledge and understanding to wireless telegraphy, thus allowing Marconi the privilege of doing so.
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The world’s greatest injustice has been endowed upon Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and I believe it is time history corrected this wrong.
Tesla was the true inventive genius of modern times whose rightful place as the inventor of the AC-related electrical components and radio should be justly recognised.
Concerning the AC current, Tesla’s 40 patents (covering his AC motors awarded in 1891) revolutionised the industry; he eventually won his battle with Edison (who favoured DC) to install AC as the current of choice. Tesla’s AC motors became the industry standard and helped electrical giants such as Westinghouse (George Westinghouse, its founder, virtually pleaded with Tesla to sell his AC patents to him cheaply lest his company went broke) and General Electric (Edison’s company – who fought a bitter campaign against Tesla) become as successful as they have been.
Concerning radio, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that Tesla’s patent No 645 576 (applied for on 2 September 1897 and allowed 20 March 1990) anticipated Marconi’s radio patent and thus accepted Tesla as the true inventor of radio.
Furthermore, Tesla fully described radio in a 1893 lecture, three years before Marconi’s arrival in England. This lecture was translated into many languages and Marconi’s denial of ever reading it was branded absurd by the US Patent Examiner.
Tesla thus got the better of his two adversaries, who subsequently became household names by utilising his inventions commercially. His name has been wiped from history’s books by errors committed in writing and vendettas by vested interests that have gone uncorrected. Such genius eclipses the combined talents of Edison and Marconi and anyone who respects the truth and not “accepted” history should fight for Tesla’s place in history.
Marconi was not the inventor of radio: the first radio transmission was made by Sir Oliver Lodge, an Englishman.
This was a broadcast of Morse code made from the British Association in Oxford on 14 August 1894. A spark gap transmitter situated in the Clarendon Laboratory sent a signal to the Oxford museum about 60 yards away.
In 1896 Sir Oliver Lodge made the first public radio transmission from Lewis’s department store, to the clock tower of the Victoria Building in Liverpool University.
Aldridge contended that Russian physicist Aleksandr Popov’s claims to have demonstrated radio communication rivalled those of Marconi. In fact, the main contender at the time was another scientist who suddenly dropped out of the race and went on to achieve immortal fame in another field.
In 1895, a young New Zealand physics student named Ernest Rutherford arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. In New Zealand Rutherford had experimented with radio telegraphy. He brought his transmitter to Britain and continued his work, transmitting signals over half a mile – a world record at the time.
However in January 1896, on learning of Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays, the Cavendish Laboratory plunged into this branch of research. Rutherford, who appeared to take the abrupt switch in research topic in his stride, went on to earn the Nobel chemistry prize in 1908 for his work on radio-activity. The following year Marconi shared the physics prize for his work on radio telegraphy.
