Marconi Museum |
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visits: Sunday at 10 am
working days on reservation
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 info visits
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Since he was a child he dreamt of becoming an inventor. His idol was Thomas Alva Edison. Born in Council Bluffs (Iowa) in 1873, after completing his studies at Yale De Forest was hired by Western Electric in Chicago. In 1900 he devised – together with a colleague – a “responder” that was meant to improve the performance of the coherer utilized by Marconi. In 1902 he founded one of his many companies, the “American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company”, with which he set out to contend with Marconi for the expansion of the American market. He did receive some commissions from the U.S. Navy but went bankrupt after just a few years, especially because of some legal cases lost against Reginald Fessenden. He stubbornly resumed his experiments and, in October 1906, announced the creation of the audion, an evolution of Fleming's diode. After a few improvements, the audion will become the triode, an essential component for capturing the modulations of the human voice in the air. During more or less the same period (winter 1906-1907), De Forest decided to avail himself of radio broadcasting – at the time no more than an experimental hypothesis – to make music accessible to everyone. In the years that followed, he took part in some public demonstrations (Eiffel Tower, Metropolitan Opera Company etc.) with varying results but always betting on entertainment as the final goal, which many considered to be ill-suited for broadcasting. A restless personality to say the least, De Forest was arrested in 1912 for stock fraud (then acquitted in 1914). He had a twenty-year controversy with Edwin Howard Armstrong, who in 1913 discovered the audion to be a potential transmitter (and not only a receiver). He became a hero for radio operators, who were rapidly growing in number in the United States, thanks to the experimental broadcasts that he carried out until 1917 and also afterward, once the war had ended. In 1923 he invented the “phonofilm”, the first example of sound-on-film. In the Thirties he also dedicated his time to television, but with few significant repercussions. However, in 1960 he received an Oscar for his career achievements before dying the following year in Hollywood, in 1961. The mastermind of over 300 patents, De Forest was probably the inventor who contributed the most to the changeover from Marconi's wireless telegraphy to the system that transmits voice and music. But – despite the title of the autobiography (The Father of Radio) – he only achieved in part the fame that he had sought all his life, perhaps because he always preferred to be his own boss, surrounding himself with disputable collaborators, or perhaps because he never matched his scientific acumen to a method or work ethic, often leaving unfinished that which he had brilliantly perceived.
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Marconi did not attend school regularly. He used to spend long periods in Tuscany with his mother Annie and brother Alfonso, where he studied fitfully in a series of different schools. For one year at the Cavallero Institute in Florence he had a friend, though in a different class, who would later become his right-hand man: Luigi Solari. Solari was born in Turin in 1873. He became a Navy officer, but also cultivated an interest in the study of electricity. In July 1897 he attended Marconi's first demonstrations in Italy, which took place in the Gulf of La Spezia and where he was reunited with his old school friend. Several years later, in 1901, they would discuss a supply of wireless telegraphic equipment for the Italian Navy, where Solari worked. On 1902 Solari accompanied Marconi on the Carlo Alberto cruiser, working with him on a series of successful experiments. From that moment on their partnership strengthened. Although Marconi dedicated much of his time to public relations and preferred to handle things personally, he used to send Solari in his place, when he was unable to attend a meeting or negotiation. They communicated directly with each other, even bypassing the company's management. In 1903 Solari represented Italy at the first International Radiotelegraphic Conference in Berlin. The atmosphere was clearly hostile towards Marconi, but Solari spoke in his defence, as he would do on many other occasions. Representing the Marconi Company, he supervised the development of radiotelegraphic plants in Italy, in particular the large station at Coltano, near Pisa, which was opened in 1911. He also mediated successful agreements between the Marconi Company and various Mediterranean countries, in particular Portugal and Spain. For over thirty years Solari worked as Marconi's representative, consultant and spokesman. He also contributed to the continuous development of technological innovations with his great knowledge and interest for the subject. He was the last person to see Marconi before he died suddenly from an heart attack. Solari continued to hold new and important diplomatic and institutional positions and died in 1957, twenty years after Marconi. During his life Solari also wrote detailed memoirs which he eventually published, thus becoming Marconi's biographer.
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© 2013 - Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi - Villa Griffone - via Celestini 1 - 40037 Pontecchio Marconi (BO) - C.F 80063250379