Excellent article - cheers.
Now for one on GEC-Marconi :(
Marconi: The West of England's very own Italian wireless pioneer
This is the story of a 22-year-old technology genius, who, stung by the lack of interest in his work in his homeland, moved to a new country to develop his ideas. In a single year, this individual extended the performance of a key technology of his time by a factor of more than 20. It sounds like an outlandish tale even by …
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Tuesday 24th February 2015 05:52 GMT Faux Science Slayer
Marconi was a FRAUD and a PATENT THIEF
See my comments below....
Tesla: "Of course Marconi's patent work, he took every one of mine"
This Rothschild/Rockefeller fraud then set up the Edison puppet as Radio Corporation of America to produce receivers, broadcast equipment and programing, all under monopolist propaganda control.
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Friday 27th February 2015 11:27 GMT Chris Fox
Re: Marconi was a FRAUD and a PATENT THIEF
Indeed, the world of radio patents from 1890's onwards was as controversial as software patents today. Marconi was awarded a patent on his "black box", which turned out to contain the inventions of others. This was a major scandal at the time among those working on radio. And his patents on tuning were not novel; they just describe existing work of others. He was also supposed to be working for the GPO when he was making his refinements to radio, using public money and a team of GPO staff, but then refused to hand over the results of their work to the GPO, claiming it as his own. HIs first supposedly successful transatlantic transmission is also subject to serious doubt, and changes to make it work later (e.g. lowering the frequency) again appears to be based on the work of other. He ruthelesly expoited the Titanic disaster, claiming his radios had saved hundreds of lives (it is interesting that one of his associates at that time, Sarnoff -- who was embroilled in this story through some fiction about him somehow being involved as a telegraph operator -- was subsequently found to have misappropriated other inventions, including wideband FM, which ultimately lead to the sucide of the actual inventor).
Marconi is like Edison, Alexander Graham-Bell and other commercially successful "great inventors" who turned out not to have invented "their" inventions; he was very good at marketing, politicking, ruthlessly claiming the inventions of others, and gaming the patent system, and whose success seems to be based on lucky timing, combined with a complete absence of ethics or shame.
This is not to say we cannot acknowledge the achievements of Marconi and others for what they are; I just don't see why it is necessary to perpetuate these sanitised and fictionalised accounts, and continue to ignore or whitewash the more controversial aspects of their professional lifes. Doing so merely serves to belittle and ignore those who actually did the work on which the success of these "great inventors" was built.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 13:50 GMT Mage
Re: *ahem*
Tesla was truly one of the inventors. Marconi was the most successful Radio Entrepenure perhaps till David Sarnoff (RCA). Marconi was one of the original RCA founders with GE, but kicked out by US government.
RCA bought Victor Talking Machine Co. Which in UK was HMV and in Japan JVC. When in 1928 UK Columbia Graphophone was taken over by HMV, the holding company was EMI.
The US part of Columbia became CBS.
Hence when Marconi wanted to divest the loss making domestic Radio and concentrate on Marine & Industrial, RCA (Sarnoff) encouraged him to licence Marconiphone name to EMI. Hence HMV and Marconiphone models in 1930s pretty much identical. Also why EMI and RCA collaborated on the Electronic TV. especially the camera, which defeated Farnsworth (his was inherently rubbish) and Baird, who at least came up with electronic film scanning, but otherwise didn't invent TV as his Mechincal TV was a Victorian era invention.
Bairds film to TV system was used in Satellites before suitable CCD cameras. The film was developed and then slowly scanned and transmitted.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 17:45 GMT Peter Simpson 1
Re: *ahem*
Tesla was all "I can do this, but it's so easy, I won't bother"
Marconi was not only a scientist, he was a very perceptive entrepeneur who managed to build a business out of his discovery, defend it in court *and* make it pay. He should be celebrated for that. Someone would have "invented" radio sooner or later, but the man who made it pay was Marconi.
Being a smart inventor is no use if you can't make a buck at it, which is something Marconi realised and Tesla (whether he realised it or not) was unable to accomplish.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 18:55 GMT Mike VandeVelde
Re: *ahem*
"It sometimes happens, even in science, that one man can be right against the world. Professor Fessenden was that man. He fought bitterly and alone to prove his theories. It was he who insisted, against the stormy protests of every recognized authority, that what we now call radio was worked by continuous waves sent through the ether by the transmitting station as light waves are sent out by a flame. Marconi and others insisted that what was happening was a whiplash effect. The progress of radio was retarded a decade by this error. The whiplash theory passed gradually from the minds of men and was replaced by the continuous wave, with all too little credit to the man who had been right."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Fessenden
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Monday 23rd February 2015 12:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Timeless wireless communication ...
"January 1903 saw the first transmission from the US, from president Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VI."
That would have been quite an achievement, given that Edward VI was the son of Henry VIII, and lived 12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553. Presumably you mean Edward VII.
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Tuesday 24th February 2015 08:31 GMT Anna Logg
Re: Timeless wireless communication ...
Speaking as an RF Hardware engineer who often ends up working on system debug, you wouldn't believe the number of misunderstandings this still causes. SW group enumerate the first physical transmitter in a radio system as TX0, HW group refer to it as TX1, and so on.
I've yet to meet a human being who starts counting on their fingers at zero!
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Monday 23rd February 2015 17:48 GMT Peter Simpson 1
Re: Timeless wireless communication ...
Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry three;
One, two, three Neds, Richard two
Harrys four, five, six... then who?
Edwards four, five, Dick the bad,
Harrys twain VII VIII and Ned the Lad;
[g]Mary, Bessie, James the Vain,
Charlie, Charlie, James again...
William and Mary, Anna Gloria,
Four Georges I II III IV, William and Victoria;
Edward seven next, and then
George the fifth in 1910;
Ned the eighth soon abdicated
Then George the sixth was coronated;
After which Elizabeth
And that's the end until her death.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 15:02 GMT jeffdyer
Re: I think I may have family involved
Fair enough, but the usage is still commonplace.
As opposed to the post that I was commenting on. Did he mean the parent of his parent, or one of his parents that was better than the other?
Think of it in terms of mine being a (possible) syntax error which the compiler would pick up and his which was valid code but referring to the wrong object, possibly causing an airliner to fall out of the sky killing all the passengers.
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Monday 16th March 2015 08:39 GMT Steve 114
Re: I think I may have family involved
A grandfather-in-law (do-what?) was a young technician there, and once stole Marconi's sandwiches. Apparently Marconi was a difficult man to work for, but whether that was before or after he'd had his sandwiches stolen we are not told. PS: If the Italians weren't interested, why did Marconi spend so long on RM Carlo Alberto running experiments as a personal guest of the Italian King?
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Monday 23rd February 2015 13:34 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: Splendid ties
I suspect that's more to do with the description "Italian radio pioneer".
I still agree, though. The reverse-snobbery of the tech industry when it comes to personal appearance is depressing: reacting against the "corporate" suit-and-tie has just resulted in Technology becoming its mirror-image where anyone who looks after their appearance more than is "necessary" is judged to be shallow or incompetent.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 13:00 GMT jeffdyer
I'm fairly sure the first radio transmission across water was from Lavernock Point in South Wales across to Somerset.
There is a plaque on the church wall there and more importantly, to 1980's sixth formers anyway, the infamous Marconi Club which ran a pretty much underage drinking club masquerading as a disco.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavernock#Marconi_and_the_first_radio_messages_across_open_sea
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Tuesday 24th February 2015 07:31 GMT Radio Wales
A Welsh affair.
Yes indeed. You're quite right. Marconi's early pioneering work of proving that he was chasing the possible was concentrated in south Wales just to the west of Cardiff at Lavernock Point.
So really it was a Welsh affair which failed to get so much as a mention.
Still, that's typical of our Cousin Jacks from across the water to try to grab all the glory.
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Tuesday 24th February 2015 09:03 GMT BongoJoe
Re: A Welsh affair.
Then there's David Hughes from Corwen who in 1879 was detecting spark signals.
Go forwards three years to 1892 and William Preece, another Gogledd Cymreag was sending signals across from Cardiff to Holm Island before doing the same across the Conwy Valley.
Then came Marconi.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 18:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: UKIP
What funny little german guy?
As another "Obscure Balkan Subject" (quoting George Dimitrov @ the torching of the Reichstag trial), I consider this as a mortal insult. He is an _EX_ little german guy. His ancestry has ruled various Balkan countries (off the top of my head - Bulgaria, Greece, and principalities over the last two centuries for long enough to become one of us. It does not matter if they were called Batenberg or Glücksburg at the time - to the same effect.
He has gone native and has remained so even after becoming "Mountbatten" instead of Batenberg or Gluksburg.
Which makes listening to UKIP rants about Bulgarian and Romanians doubly funny by the way.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 13:23 GMT John Miles 1
Visit the Cable and Wireless Telegraph museum as well
Having made it all the way down to this lovely and remote part of England it's also worth seeing the fascinating Cable and Wireless Telegraph museum at Porthcurno on the Lands End peninsular. A superb collection of Telegraph instruments; a fusion of engineering and craftsman's work of art. For sea views try the unique and romantic Minack open air theatre high up on the nearby cliffs.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 16:43 GMT Uncle Slacky
Re: Visit the Cable and Wireless Telegraph museum as well
There are also, on a clifftop near the Porthcurno museum, the remains of the concrete anchors used to stabilize a huge antenna put up by the (then) rival Eastern Telegraph Company to spy on Marconi's transmissions in the days before the "forced" merger in the 30s that formed C&W and brought together the two rival comms systems under one roof.
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Monday 23rd February 2015 13:26 GMT deshepherd
For old school wired communication then go to nearby Porthcurno - see the hut there where the cables from all over the empire came ashore in the UK and there is an interesting museum there as well (plus non techies can go to see the Minnack theatre at the same time!)
Also there used to be a visitor centre at Goonhilly to cover the wizzy new satelite comms which I remember occupying a wet day on a family holiday a few years ago but that subsequently closed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
