Updated:21/05/2022 02:40h
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It was on April 26, 1900 when the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) recorded in the United Kingdom the patent 7777, of his invention of wireless telegraphy. Many are those who defend that this ‘so round’ number was not the result of chance, but that it was granted in a special way.
It was the culmination of work that went back years. May 14, 1897 Marconi had got the first transmission of wireless telegraphy in open sea.
He was able to send a message five kilometers away saying “Are you ready?” The distance from Frat Holm Island to Pernarth, in the Bristol Channel (UK).
About to drown with the Titanic
In 1899, it took a further step in the search for global resonance, by establishing communication between France and England through the English Channel, overcoming the 48 kilometers that separate Dover (England) and Boulougne (France).
In 1901 wireless telegraphy jumped the Atlantic Ocean by being able to communicate, through hertzian waves, Poldhu (England) with Saint Johns (Canada). Three very weak signals -three points that corresponded to the letter ‘s’- managed to travel the 3,684 km of distance.
In 1909 this meteoric career was rewarded, Marconi was awarded by the Swedish Academy with the Nobel Prize in Physics for “his contribution to wireless telegraphy”.
Just three years later Marconi and his wife, Beatrice, were invited by the White Star Line to travel on the inaugural voyage of the Titanic, on behalf of the shipping company. However, the Italian engineer declined the invitation, explaining that he had a lot of backlog and needed a stenographer to be able to work on board. The one from the Lusitania, which left three days later, was faster and more competent than the one from the Titanic, so he decided to change the ticket for the other ship.
Luck was sweet with Marconi because thanks to that change he was able to save his life. But not only that, but he had a much sweeter aftertaste, since thanks to his invention a distress signal which allowed the RMS Carpathia to reach the scene and save some seven hundred passengers. In this way, the entire world became aware of the immense power of wireless telegraphy to save lives and the need to incorporate it immediately into navigation.
Three years after the sinking of the Titanic, in April 1915, when the world was immersed in the First World War, Marconi once again embarked on the Lusitania bound for New York. As the ocean liner was returning to Liverpool – on May 7 – she was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. Nearly 1,200 people lost their lives. Marconi had stayed in the city that never sleeps testifying in a patent trial. For the second time the Italian had fooled the Fates.
Patent yes but invention, maybe, no
But let’s go to the details that is where the demons hide. The engineer applied for patent 7777 only in the United Kingdom and using fourteen patents from Nikolas Tesla (1856-1943).
And it is that this Serbian inventor had patented in 1891 the induction coil, a circuit that generates low-current, high-voltage electricity, and is commonly used in radios; and he had designed in 1895 – two years before Marconi – a system for transmitting voice messages without wires.
His tenacity and ingenuity would be rewarded, albeit belatedly. It was in 1943 when the Supreme Court of the United States recognized the Serbian as the inventor of the radio. By then the Italian had been resting eternal sleep for six years and had enjoyed enormous popularity in life.
And it is that there are people for whom luck always gives them a sweet taste and others for whom it produces a bitter aftertaste.
Pedro Gargantilla is an internist at El Escorial Hospital (Madrid) and the author of several popular books.
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