What sets the young, self-taught Guglielmo Marconi apart, leading him to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, 16 honorary degrees and various international awards, lies in his experimentation from his country villa near Bologna and his pioneering discovery of the entrepreneurial scope of radio signals.
Guglielmo Marconi was born in 1874 in Bologna’s Via IV Novembre, an ancient street in the historic city centre which, in the Middle Ages, used to be dotted with the homes of university professors and their schools.
Guglielmo’s father Giuseppe was a landowner, while his mother, Anne Jameson, was the daughter of a wealthy Irish distiller.
As was still the custom at that time, Guglielmo received his primary education at home, later undertaking technical studies in an intermittent manner, first in Florence and then in Leghorn.
He then retired to his father's villa in Pontecchio, near Bologna, where he undertook his first experiments as a self-taught scientist.
By reading up on the international scientific literature and collaborating with leading scientists at the University of Bologna, such as the physicist Augusto Righi, he developed practical empirical research into the theory of the electromagnetic field formulated in 1873 by Scottish mathematician James Maxwell.
In 1895, he was ready to transmit the first remote signal by means of radio waves.
In February of the following year, accompanied by his mother, 22-year-old Guglielmo landed in London, where he submitted a first provisional patent application (5 March 1896) and later a final application (2 June 1896), only receiving a positive response on 2 July 1897.
After proving the utility of his invention, he founded - with great business acumen - the Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Company (later named the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company). His fame reached the ear of the British royal family, who allowed him to conduct the first wireless experiments at sea, with the signal reaching the Prince of Wales' yacht from Queen Victoria's residence in Ballycastle.
It wasn’t long until the importance of maritime signals was empirically understood, when a vessel, which had run aground, made the first ever distress call.
The distances covered by radio signals became increasingly greater until, in 1901, the first transoceanic wireless communication was transmitted between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland. Using instrumentation hitherto unimaginable to academic physicists, Marconi believed he could exploit the curvature of the earth's surface to direct radio signals across vast spaces, not knowing that in fact it is the ionised layers of the atmosphere, on which the electromagnetic waves bounce, that allow the latter to arrive.
He achieved instant success, and in 1902 the University of Bologna’s School of Applied Sciences for Engineers awarded him an honorary degree. That same year, Marconi assigned his patents free of charge to the Italian Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, on the condition that the national stations would only use the equipment he manufactured himself.
Bologna continued to glorify its most illustrious citizen, naming after him the city's first permanent cinema, which operated from 1904 to 1914 in the Mercato di Mezzo, and the new Technical-Commercial Institute opened in 1906.
In the meantime, Marconi had started collaborating with the Italian Navy, testing transmitter antennas used also to communicate with Italy’s African colonies.
In 1907, the scientist tested a regular transoceanic communications system operated by the Marconi Corporation. The importance of this system came to public attention in 1909 following the resounding success of the naval rescue mission that saved 1,700 passengers when the ‘Republic’ ocean liner accidentally collided with the ‘Florida’ steamer.
This contributed in no small part to Guglielmo winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with physicist Carl Ferdinand Braun, that same year. Marconi had already been nominated several times, but a certain amount of discontent had grown around him in the academic world and so, after the success of the rescue mission, a compromise was reached, which consisted in awarding both him and the more orthodox German professor the much-coveted prize.
Another less fortunate yet memorable rescue mission, that of the Titanic, consolidated Guglielmo’s fame, especially in America (Marconi and his family had actually been invited to take part in the cruise, but for various reasons had fortunately declined the invitation).
Italy could not miss out on the opportunity of having such a prominent figure in the ranks of its political system and so, in 1914, Marconi was appointed senator for life. A few months later, in 1915, he enlisted in the Royal Army, first as lieutenant then as captain. Finally, he became a Captain in the Royal Navy, inaugurating in 1916 what was to become a continuous and formidable advancement in rank.
During the First World War, Marconi felt the need to develop a more efficient system of communication, no longer based on long waves, but on short waves capable of passing through a dense system of radio links.
After the war ended, he represented Italy at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), from whence he returned bitter and disappointed with what became known as a 'mutilated victory'. Indeed, when he was tasked with convincing d'Annunzio to abandon the conquest of Fiume (1920), the poet soon got him to join the Istrian cause and to broadcast radio messages in favour of the enterprise.
Patriotic and nationalist sentiment then brought him into contact with fascist politics. He was appointed president of the National Research Council in 1927, president of the Royal Academy of Italy (of which he had been a member since 1912) in 1930, and president of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia in 1933. He then received the hereditary title of Marquis from King Victor Emmanuel III.
Despite his political career and international successes, in 1933, when Marconi presented a primitive radar he had begun working on ten years earlier to a number of high-ranking officers, he found no support and had to abandon the project.
Instead, in his native Bologna, with which he maintained a close bond, he was always highly acclaimed. In 1926, he gave an ad-libbed speech at the Archiginnasio in which he described his experiments and declared himself much attached to his early days in Bologna.
Later, in 1934, the University - in the person of the then Rector Alessandro Ghigi and the Director of the Institute of Physics, Quirino Majorana, who in 1921 had taken over from Augusto Righi, Marconi’s first great supporter - granted Guglielmo a second honorary degree, this time in Physics.
Worthy of note among Marconi's last exploits is his collaboration in London with the BBC, which made use of his electronic EMI television system to inaugurate the world's first regular television service in 1936.
Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937, and upon hearing the news, radio stations around the world suspended broadcasting for two minutes. At his own behest, the funeral was held in his native city, in the Basilica of San Petronio, and the coffin was laid to rest in the Monumental Cemetery of the Certosa of Bologna. In 1941, the body was exhumed and buried in the Marconi Mausoleum, built by architect Marcello Piacentini at Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, where the ingenious Guglielmo had made his first experiments.
In 1938, in honour of their most illustrious citizen, the town and its municipality were renamed Pontecchio Marconi and Sasso Marconi in his memory. In the same year, Villa Griffone became a Foundation, and since 1966 it has been home to a Radiocommunications Study and Research Centre.
In 1949, Bologna’s highly central Via Roma was renamed in Marconi’s honour. Ironically, on this road stands the house where Luigi Galvani was born. Thus, the doctor who studied animal electricity and the physicist who studied radio waves are brought together, right in the heart of the city.
Finally, the decision to dedicate the new city airport, inaugurated in 1963, to Guglielmo Marconi came naturally.
In a global world, where information has become a primary source of power, but also an indispensable element of integration and progress, Marconi can rightly be awarded the title of modern-world entrepreneur.