IL NUOVO CIMENTO VOL.

20 D, N, 7-8 Luglio-Agosto 1998

Italian research and invention in the age of wireless telegraphy (*)

F. SEITZ
The Rockefeller University - New York, USA

(ricevuto il23 Gennaio 1998; approvato il 19 Febbraio 1998)

Summary, - The early history of the practical development of wireless

communication is reviewed, While the enterprise was truly an international one, it is
clear that the special, courageous activities which characterized Marconi's work
proved to be essential for the rapid development which occurred in the decade
between 1895 and 1905, He in turn was aided by many sources, not least by highly
competent and imaginative engineers of the Italian Navy,
PACS OL30,Ee - Monographs and collections,

James C. Maxwell's unifying treatment of electromagnetism in the 1860s and his

proposal that light waves are electromagnetic in origin, corresponding to the free wave
solutions of his equations, opened an entirely new domain of physics for exploration [1],
One of the scientists who appreciated the full significance of Maxwell's discovery was
Hermann Helmholtz, trained in medicine but a physicist at heart, Helmholtz took two
positive steps, First he convinced Heinrich Hertz, his brilliantly capable former
student, that it would be worth trying to see if one could produce electromagnetic
waves of larger wavelength on a laboratory scale using ordinary electrical equipment,
independent of a light source, Second, he encouraged a young American visitor to his
laboratory in 1875, Henry A Rowland, to test Maxwell's hypothesis contained in his
version of the electromagnetic equations that a moving charge carries a magnetic field
with it, Both ventures proved to be successful, although Rowland had to repeat his
experiment twice during subsequent decades to convince doubters of his results,

(*) In honour of Prof Gianfranco Chiarotti on the occasion of his 70th birthday,

© Societa Italiana di Fisica 941

942 F. SEITZ

1. - Commercial activity. Guglielmo Marconi

Hertz's success in the 1880s stimulated many others to find possible ways of using
the newly discovered radiation, mainly for purposes of wireless communication [2].
Most prominent in this group were Ferdinand Braun [3], an experienced physicist who
had previously discovered crystal rectification in the solids that we now call
semiconductors and had invented the electron oscilloscope, Guglielmo Marconi [4], in
his very early twenties and highly motivated, Alexander Popov [5], a skilled Russian
engineer, and Jagadis Chandra Bose [6]. Actually, Bose, among other things, began
transmitting pulses of radiation over distances of the order of a kilometer in 1894,
before Marconi, while a student at Cambridge University in England. While all four
made notable contributions to the advance of wireless telegraphy, as did others, there
is no doubt that because of his drive and connections, Marconi had by far the greatest
influence on the speed with which wireless telegraphy became useful on an inter-
national scale.
It should be emphasized that Marconi did not possess a highly advanced formal
education in science or engineering, although he did complete secondary school
education at a technical school in Livorno. As a result, he had to rely to a substantial
degree on the technical contributions of others as his work progressed, and did so in a
highly effective way. For example, he turned to nearby physics professor Augusto
Righi at the University of Bologna for advice during the early stages of his experiments
with wireless. In addition, he had boundless energy, a refusal to accept the word
"impossible", and a clear vision from start of the importance that wireless telegraphy
could have on the affairs of the world. In 1895, at the age of twenty-one, he duplicated
Hertz's experimental equipment at his home and was soon testing the range over which
signals could be transmitted. Along the way, he was able, with the help of high-placed
English relatives, to attract the attention of the British postal service and private
British investors who were anxious to see if there was a way of extending telegraphy
beyond the limitations of the wire-bound service of the day. He shifted the center of
research to Britain once these contacts were made.
In order to employ the widely used Morse code, Marconi devised equipment which
could transmit a train of wave pulses of variable length. Whereas Hertz had used an
induction coil which generated a tiny arc to detect transmitted signals, Marconi made
use of a device widely known as a coherer, invented in 1890 by the French scientist-
engineer Edouard Branly [7] with whom he formed a typically close relationship. It
consisted of a tube possessing electrodes at each end which was filled with
appropriately chosen metal filings (tube de limaille). The filings became aligned when
the received electromagnetic pulse was passed through it, changing the overall
electrical conductivity of the contents of the device. The great disadvantage of the
initial version of the coherer laid in the fact that it had to be shaken after each pulse
to randomize the arrangement of filings-a process known as decoherence. An
advantage, however, was associated with the fact that it could be used to make a
permanent record of the message on the tape linked to an auxiliary circuit and having
its own power supply.
Soon after moving to England, Marconi employed Alexander Fleming, an expert in
electromagnetic theory and electrical devices, as a consultant. He also established very
close relationships with the technical staff of the Italian Navy [8] at La Spezia on the
Ligurian Coast between Genoa and Pisa-a relationship that proved to be very fruitful
on both sides. In addition to carrying out extensive studies of the transmission and
ITALIAN RESEARCH AND INVENTION IN THE AGE OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 943

reception of wireless signals on both land and sea, the naval technical staff sought to
improve their equipment, based initially on Marconi's, as their experiments
progressed. Important new results were transmitted to Marconi. In 1927, Admiral
Ernesto Simi on of the Italian Navy wrote a book [8] setting forth the history of his
Navy's involvement in such research and the close relationships which developed with
Marconi.

2. - Ferdinand Braun. Resonant circuits

Although Marconi's experiments on long-range transmission were remarkably

successful at first-he succeeded in transmitting messages up to fifteen kilometers by
1898-he failed to obtain additional advances in range with the system he was using. In
the meantime, Braun, supported by a group of German entrepreneurs who were trying
to get around the ever-tightening British patents that arose from Marconi's work,
became puzzled by Marconi's limitations since Braun was having more success in
long-range transmission. On viewing a photograph of Marconi's transmitting
equipment, he saw that the circuits being used, which included a ground-based lead to
the antenna system, explained Marconi's difficulty. As a consequence, Braun applied
for a patent for a different circuit in which the portion of the system generating
electromagnetic waves was more lightly coupled to and in resonance with the
transmitting antenna. Had this patent been properly handled by Braun's backers, it
might have given them far-reaching advantages. They delayed action for many months,
however, by which time Braun's invention was being employed widely. Using it,
Marconi was soon transmitting across the English Channel (1899) and prepared to see
if he could bridge the Atlantic Ocean. Braun, incidentally, appears to be the first
individual to propose the use of phased antenna arrays for the directional transmission
of wireless radiation.
Common scientific wisdom suggested that the curvature of the Earth would prevent
transmission beyond "line-of-sight" but Marconi was gUided by his own private sources
of inspiration. He shifted to more powerful transmitters, which incidentally produced
much longer wavelengths, and, aided by reflections from the ionization layers in the
upper atmosphere, succeeded in transmitting signals, repetitions of the coded letter
"S", from Cornwall in England to Newfoundland in North America in 1901. His good
luck had held and he was assured that the company which he had founded at the turn of
the century would take its place as an international leader in wireless telegraphy. The
full importance of the new technology was brought to the surface in a most dramatic
way in 1912 when messages concerning the disaster to the newly launched liner Titanic
were picked up on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as at sea.

3. - Improving the coherer. Earphones

Almost everyone who used the coherer tried to improve upon it until it was finally
all but replaced early in the next century by better devices. Marconi was no exception,
having improved it in several ways, including the addition of a so-called "jigger" which
broke the coherence of the filings after each dot or dash was received.
In April of 1899 [9], J. C. Bose published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London describing an improved, self-restoring coherer. It depended upon
the mechanical restoring force of a column of liquid mercury contained in a tube to
944 F. SEITZ

re-establish the position of an electrically conducting bar. The bar, which was confined
in the same tube and in intimate, wet contact with the mercury, was displaced relative
to the mercury as a result of the passage of an electric pulse, producing a
corresponding change of electrical conductivity of the assembly. A month later, T.
Tommasina, in Geneva, published a paper [10] dealing with a different topic in which he
mentioned the development of a similar device in which two conducting bars are
separated by droplets rather than a column of mercury. We will never know to what
extent Tommasina's contribution was based on Bose's paper, to which he had ready
access, but Bose must clearly be given primary credit.
In this connection it may be emphasized that Bose displayed great inventiveness in
the research with electromagnetic radiation that he carried out after returning to
India, in spite of the meager resources available to him. He focused on what may be
termed "optical" experiments with radiation in the millimeter range of wavelength [11],
and in the processed devised much equipment that was to be re-invented for radar and
other uses in the 1930s and 1940s during the heydays of microwave innovation. This
included hollow-metal waveguides, horn receivers, and laminated diffraction gratings.
Moreover, in connection with the experiments related to improvement of the coherer
described above, he noted that he could detect the passage through the coherer of the
pulse derived from a received electromagnetic wave with available earphones, in spite
of the mismatch between the high frequency of the signal and the optimum range of
sensitivity of the earphones. This appears to be the earliest recorded use of earphones-
another of Bose's major contributions.
In any event, a junior officer at La Spezia, Semaforista (signalman) Paolo Castelli,
employed the concepts involved in the mercury-based self-restoring coherer described
above to develop a reliable, much more refined, working device based upon it. His unit
was less sensitive than the original Branly version, based on the use of metal filings,
however, the pulses registered clearly when magnetic earphones were employed in an
appropriate auxiliary circuit, thereby providing a convenient, flexible method of
detection. As far as can be ascertained from the readily available literature, this
represents the start of the regular use in service of earphones in wireless
telegraphy-another innovation to be credited to the imaginative applied research of
the Italian Navy. We can presumably assume that the information contained in Bose's
1899 paper had been received and absorbed by the Italian group.
The new coherer system developed by Castelli was sufficiently effective that the
Navy decided to present an advanced version to Marconi in order to assist him in his
experimental work. Marconi, in fact, used this device in the first successful trans-
atlantic experiment.
Incidentally, the privilege of presenting the coherer to Marconi was given to the
Marchese Luigi Solari, who held the rank of Tenente di Vasce//o (First Lieutenant) and
who had followed the development of the device. In 1939 Solari wrote a book [12] in
which, while mentioning Castelli, he states that he was personally responsible for the im-
provements in the coherer. The version given in Simion's book, however, makes it clear
that Castelli deserves major credit for the development of the useful "hardened" version.

4. - Rectification. Semiconductor diodes

At this point there seems to be a hiatus in the readily available historical record.
The introduction of earphones, first by Bose and then for everyday practical use by the
ITALIAN RESEARCH AND INVENTION IN THE AGE OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 945

Italian Navy, greatly simplified the reception of wireless messages for many purposes
and eventually proved to be even more useful later in the early days of radio with the
transmission of sound, including voice, music and the like. As mentioned, however,
earphones which were designed for telephone transmission and reception were most
responsive to frequencies lying in the range of sensitivity of the human ear, that is in
the range of a kilohertz. On the other hand, the frequencies used in wireless
transmission and reception were very much higher, providing a substantial mechanical
mismatch and leading to a waste of received energy that might have been converted to
sound. The simplest, partial, solution to the problem is to rectify the received wireless
signal, converting it to a pulse of a single sign that is modulated by whatever super-
imposed frequencies come through the rectifier. It is not clear who first proposed
rectification, if indeed there was a single source. The most likely individual to have
introduced the concept is R. A. Fessenden [13]. He was a Canadian who started an
academic career in United States and then switched to create a private research
laboratory devoted to the exploitation of wireless. Although he was a very prolific
inventor, he is perhaps best known for the first experimental transmission of voice and
music by wireless and for introducing the heterodyne concept, both soon after the turn
of the century. While application of heterodyne principle would in a sense have
provided an ideal solution to the problem of using earphones by transforming the
received signal to a lower frequency, the proposal was clearly premature and had to
await the development of stable vacuum tube-based oscillators and amplifiers in the
next decade. In any event, Fessenden clearly saw the relative advantage of rectifying
the incoming signal and developed a rectifier which consisted of a wire dipped in an
appropriately selected electrolytic medium. This invention served the purpose for a
brief period, but was soon displaced by two other means of rectification that soon
proved to be much more effective, namely the semiconductor crystal rectifier and the
vacuum tube rectifier, or Fleming valve.
One might have thought that Ferdinand Braun would have been the first individual
to connect the use of the crystal rectifier with earphones but there seems to be no
evidence to support this view. Early on he attempted to replace the coherer as used in
the original manner, without earphones, with crystal rectifiers, but the change
provided no advantages. Apparently the individual who deserves most credit for
combining the use of crystal rectifiers with that of earphones is Bose. He began by
employing an iron pOint-probe electrode placed in contact with a rectifying oxidized
iron electrode but finally applied for a patent in 1901 for the use of galena, lead sulfide,
as a superior crystal rectifier. Three years later, G. W. Pickard [14], working in a
laboratory of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, discovered that he
could make even better crystal rectifiers from the available commercial grade of
elemental silicon being used as an alloying agent by metallurgists. He left AT&T and
established a private company which manufactured silicon diodes for use in wireless.
Although Marconi took advantage of the convenience of earphones in much of his work,
he also improved electro-mechanical tape-recording instrumentation in order to retain the
benefit of permanent records of the results of research as well as received messages.

5. - The Fleming valve

As was mentioned earlier, Alexander Fleming formed a close working relationship

with Marconi soon after the latter arrived in England. In 1904 Fleming [15] began to
946 F. SEITZ

suffer considerable hearing loss and found it difficult to use the earphone-crystal
rectifier combination for wireless reception. In searching for a means of rectification
with added amplification, it occurred to him that the electron current emitted by a hot
filament in an evacuated tube and collected by a second electrode could serve that
purpose. A vacuum tube diode that employed an independent source of amplifying
power was born. It opened up an entirely new world of electronics that was, in later
decades, to eclipse the use of semiconductors for a period of time. It hardly need be
added that Marconi displayed deep interest in the innovation.

6. - Direction finding. Triangulation

Early in 1903, Professor Alexander Artom [16] of the Royal Museum of Turin
proposed that the Italian Navy develop equipment to determine the direction of the
source from which wireless signals were being received. The subsequent research,
carried out over the next two years, proved to be very successful for distances up to
several hundred kilometers. The work was carried out through the combined efforts of
Commanders Bonomo and Pullino and Tenente di Vascello Amici Grosso and
Alexander Tosi. In view of the success, it was decided to create a syndicate to
commercialize the equipment. Units were installed in several French harbors. The
commercial activity was carried out by Tosi in cooperation with Ettore Bellini, formerly
a naval electrician, both individuals having left active service.
The success of direction finding made it possible, through triangulation, to locate
the actual position of the source. During World War 1, the British fleet used such
equipment to locate the German fleet as it came out into the Atlantic Ocean for what
became the battle of Jutland.
Although the technology associated with direction-finding progressed, that
associated with echo location, that is what we now term radar, languished. In 1904,
Christian Hulsmeyer [17] carried on experiments in Rotterdam harbor and obtained
observable reflections from metal ships several kilometers away. Moreover, Marconi
made an issue of the potentialities of radar in a professional address delivered in the
early 1920s. Unfortunately no funds for further development came forth until the 1930s
even though echo location could have prevented many disastrous ship collisions that
occurred in harbors during conditions of obscure weather in the intervening period.

7. - Megahertz transmission

During World War 1, Marconi began to explore the possibility of carrying out
long-range wireless transmission with the use of frequencies substantially higher than
those in the kilohertz range in common use at the time and concluded that the issue
was a promising one to pursue. Actually amateurs, so-called radio "hams", took the lead
in working with frequencies above one megahertz in the early 1920s and demonstrated
that the Atlantic Ocean could be bridged in that range. Commercial activity soon
followed.
ITALIAN RESEARCH AND INVENTION IN THE AGE OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 947

REFERENCES

[1] An extension of the material in this article appears in the book by the author and N. G.
EINSPRUCH. Electronic Genie, The Tangled History of Silicon (University of Illinois Press,
Urbana) 1998.
[2] An account of the early history of wireless telegraphy can be found in the eleventh edition of
the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 1910-1911. See particularly Vol. 26, p. 529, et seq
I am also indebted to Dr. GIUSEPPE BALDACCHINI and Prof. GIANFRANCO CHIAROTTI for
photocopies of the following two books: AUGUSTO RIGHI and BERNARDO DESSAU, La
Telegrafia Senza Filo (Nicola Zanichelli, Bologna) 1908, see particularly page 367, 8: LUIGI
SOLARI, Storia della Radio (S. A. Fratelli Treves Editori, Milan) 1939, see particularly page
28, et seq., and page 214, et seq.
[3] An excellent biography of Ferdinand Braun has been written by FRIEDRICH KURYLO and
CHARLES SUSSKIND, Ferdinand Braun (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts) 1981.
Braun has given an account, in German, of his research up to 1909 in his Nobel Lecture,
available in the Archives of the Nobel Foundation.
[4] Two relatively recent books on Marconi are as follows: W. P. JOLLY, Marconi (Stein and Day,
New York) 1972: ORIN E. DUNLAP, Marconi. The Man and His Wireless (Arno Press, New
York) 1991. There is also available a one-hour video documentary occasionally shown on
public television: Marconi. Whisper in the Air, made by Archer Films Limited in 1994. It is
marketed by New Video Group in New York City. See also: A History of the Marconi
Company by W. J. BAKER (Mathuen and Company, Ltd.) 1974: also the paper by PROBIR K.
B. BONDYOPADHYAY, Guglielmo Marconi the Father of Long Distance Radio
Communication, An Engineers Tribute, Conference Proceedings of the Twenty Fifth
European Microwave Conference, Vol. 2 (1995), p. 879. This paper focuses on the
contributions of several of the great pioneers. Bondyopadhyay had close relationships with
the Marconi family.
[5] A technical biography has been written by CHARLES SUSSKIND, Popov and the Beginnings of
Radiotelegraphy (San Francisco Press) 1962.
[6] See D. T. EMERSON, The Work of .Jagadis Chandra Bose, IEEE-MTT-S International
Microwave Symposium, .June 8-73, 7997: also the special issue of the Proc. IEEE, 50th
Anniversary of the Transistor, .January 7998. We are indebted to Dr. P. K.
BONDYOPADHYAY, the principal editor, for a copy of the special issue.
[7] A biography of Branly has been written by PHILIPE MONOD-BROCA, Branly (Belin Press,
Paris) 1990. A number of items of equipment developed by Branly are on display in the
Branly Museum in Paris.
[8] Admiral ERNESTO SIMION has written a book that provides a good summary of his Navy's
contribution to the development of wireless telegraphy: II Contributo Dato dalla Marina
Allo Sviluppo Della Radio Telegrafia (Ministero Della Marina, Rome) 1927. I am deeply
indebted to Dr. BALDACCHINI for a photocopy of this informative document which was
generously provided to him by General of the Army FRANCESCO CREMONA.
[9] J. C. BOSE, Proc. R Soc. London, Vol. LXV, no. 416, April 27 (1899) p. 166. I am indebted to
ROBERT W. CAHN of Cambridge University for a photocopy of this important paper. Also see
the special issue of the Proc. IEEE, 50th Anniversary of the Transistor, .January 7998cited
in ref. [6].
[10] T. TOMMASINA, see ref. [8]: also the paper by V. J. PHILLIPS in the special issue of Proc. IEEE
cited in ref. [6].
[11] See the paper by D. T. EMERSON cited in ref. [6].
[12] See ref. [2].
[13] FESSENDEN reported on this invention in Electr Z, 24 (1903) 586. Accounts of some of his
other work can be found in various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, going back to the
eleventh.
948 F. SEITZ

[14] W. PICKARD. Means of Receiving Intelligence Communicated by Electric Waves. U. S.

Patent 836. 531. 1906. See the item by JAMES E. BRITTAIN. Greenleaf W Pickard and the
Eclipse Network. Proc IEEE, 83 (1995) 1434.
[15] FLEMING has written an autobiography: Memories of A Scientific Life (Marshall, Morgan &
Scott, Ltd., London and Edinburgh) 1934. Additional biographical material by W. H. ECCLES
appears in the Obituary Notices of the Royal Society, Vol. V, no. 4 (1945) 231.
[16] A. ARTOM, see ref. [8].
[17] See particularly the account of Hiilsmeyer's work in the thesis by ULRICH KERN, Die
Enstehung des Radar Verfahrens. Zur Geschichte der Radar Technik bis 7945 (University of
Stuttgart) 1984.