Thank Marconi for Radio!

Do you remember the song "We Built This City (on Rock & Roll)" by Starship?

One of the lines in the song goes like this:

Marconi played the mamba

Listen to the radio

Do you know who Marconi was or what he had to do with the radio?

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who lived from 1874 until 1937. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for his work in wireless telegraphy. Before Marconi, we had telegraphs, but they could only be used with a network of cables and wires. Marconi proved that it was possible to not only transmit information via wireless radio waves, but he was the first person to send such signals across the Atlantic Ocean. Other scientists believed, correctly, that wireless radio waves would be lost after travelling approximately 200 miles, because the would continue to travel in a straight line, rather than follow the earth's curvature; however, after much experimentation, Marconi was able to bounce signals off the Earth's ionosphere to reach a receiver in Newfoundland, Canada.

Marconi's wireless system was widely used on ships to maintain contact with the mainland. One of those ships was the RMS Titanic. The radio controllers aboard the Titanic who sent out the distress signal were employed by Marconi's company, Marconi International Marine Communication Company. Only one survived the sinking. Despite his injuries, he helped the radio controllers aboard the rescue ship, RMS Carpathia, to send wireless messages to New York regarding survivors, and to send messages from survivors to loved ones. Marconi's invention saved the lives of 706 passengers that night. Without it, more than 2,223 lives would have been lost.

Think about that the next time you turn on the radio!