Abstract
FORTY years ago on June 2, Marconi filed the application for his first patent for a wireless invention. That patentNo. 12039 of 1896described the use of Marconi's sensitive tube receiver, or coherer, connected to an earth and elevated aerial and the timing of the transmitting and receiving circuits with each other. Since that time nearly 800 patents have either been granted to Marconi and the Marconi companies, or are pending, for the inventions and developments in wireless telegraphy and telephony and broadcasting. The first British ship was equipped with Marconi apparatus in 1901. To-day, more than 3,000 British ships carry Marconi wireless installations, and thousands of people owe their lives to its use. Wireless messages were exchanged between England and Canada in 1902, and a public service was opened in 1907. For direct transmission by the long-wave system the estimated power to the aerial amounted to something like 1,000 kilowatts, the stations were to cost more than £1,000,000 each, the wave-lengths were to be of the order of 18 miles, and the aerials were to be carried on towers about 800 feet high. These figures now seem fantastic. As the result of a series of tests between the experimental station at Poldhu and Marconi's yacht Elettra, in 1923 and 1924, the short-wave beam system was evolved which enabled the Marconi Company to make an offer to the Post Office to establish communication with the Dominions using a fiftieth of the power, involving a twentieth of the cost, and providing a speed of working at least three times as great as that which was possible with the earlier long-wave system of communication. Experiments in telephony by wireless were first carried out by the Marconi Company in 1906, and it is claimed that there are now 180 Marconi broadcasting stations in use in 32 countries. It is estimated that the wireless industry employs 50,000 workpeople in Great Britain, and that the British radio industry alone has a turnover of £30,000,000 per annum.
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Anniversary of Marconi's First Patent. Nature 137, 940 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137940a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137940a0