On This Day in History: December 12

Marconi does the radio thing

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♫ Marconi plays the mamba. Listen to the radio! ♫ Wait, did Starship intend to sing “mambo” instead? A black mamba is a highly venomous snake, and some would rather be bitten by such a creature than listen to that fucking “We Built This City” song again. Anyway, Guglielmo Marconi was the guy who made it possible. Allegedly.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: December 12, 1901--

Nicola Tesla’s work and legacy just kept getting fucked over: by Edison, by that space billionaire douche, and also by Marconi. Marconi is credited as the inventor of radio, and the dude was certainly no slouch, but few ponder Tesla’s role in its development.

The Tesla coil was invented by—duh—Tesla, in 1891. It’s an electrical resonant transformer circuit something something. Whatever it is, it was critical to the transmission of radio waves. Tesla was almost ready to start using it to transmit said radio waves a few years later but his lab burnt down. Godfuckingdammit! He might have said. Despite such misfortune Tesla was granted several patents for the technology by the end of the century. And then Marconi, who’d gotten love from the British patent office, tried filing similar patents in the U.S., but the patent office was all nope sorry these rely too much on Tesla’s work. Do something original, ya fuckin’ hack. I won’t even get into how they were both basing their work on the earlier efforts of David Hughes and Heinrich Hertz. Google those guys if you want. Continues below …

If you become a paying subscriber you can listen to the audio version and hear me butcher singing the opening line to that Starship song.

Anyway, Marconi didn’t let that bit of denial stop him. And even though he was borrowing from the work of others, he was a workhorse and determined to show that this bit of laboratory physics could have useful real-world applications. In 1895 he discovered that increasing the height of an antenna improved the broadcast range, and over the next few years made many demonstrations of his work, including broadcasting across the English Channel in 1899.

A great leap forward for radio came on December 12, 1901, when Marconi used a kite to support a 500-foot-high antenna based in Newfoundland, which wouldn’t be part of Canada for another 48 years, to receive transatlantic broadcasts from England. Again, allegedly. There is some skepticism as to whether he actually pulled it off. Facing down the skeptics he said fine motherfuckers I’ll prove this shit works over such a distance, and he did exactly that one year and five days later.

He began making a lot of money off his inventions.  He also came from a powerful Italian family with major financial connections. The cash rolling into Marconi’s company contributed to him eventually getting the U.S. patents he desired. He also went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 and Tesla was so furious he sued Marconi, to no avail. Thirteen years later he became a big fan of Benito Mussolini and joined the Italian Fascist party. Gross. He died in 1937 at the age of 63.

Confession: I actually like “We Built This City.” Sue me.

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