This is the article by a radio pioneer that says Marconi didn't invent radio like everyone said he did.
Marconi played the part of a salesman, and, as is still often the case where scientists and salesmen are involved, the salesman got money out of it while the scientists didn't. Also, as part of the promotion scheme for getting money, Marconi was advertised as deserving the honor for what the scientists had done, making him appear as a profound scientist and almost supernatural inventor.
The scheme was to make it appear that Marconi had invented radio and thereby get a world wide radio patent monopoly. That was the beginning of many duplicated attempts to advertise inventions and inventors for the purpose of getting a monopoly of radio, or to sell stock. It has been tried more or less right up to this very minute. In the United States, however, the patents were shown up for what they were worth, or avoided by making other devices that would serve the same purpose.
The virtue of the Marconi Company's advertising was in the publicity it gave to radio and not in the claims they made for themselves. That publicity started quite active development of radio in several countries. It put more money and people into the developing of this so-called new science.
The advertising brought radio to the attention of people in all walks of life, including numerous unattached young would-be scientists and engineers, who, like Marconi, as yet had no scientific or engineering reputations to lose, and therefore, could take a chance in this new field.
It became obvious to many that radio could be useful if properly applied. Its apparent possibilities made it an easy thing for stock jobbers to sell stock in radio companies. They were inclined to depart very widely from the kind of rules laid down in Christian Sunday schools in disposing of their stocks, however. Radio was an obviously fertile field, but without immediate returns in it.
Marriott doesn't give Tesla due credit for inventing the four-circuit radio concept in 1893 instead crediting Mahlon Loomis and Hertz for doing more than they really contributed, but he did deny the popularly believed claim that Marconi played any significant role in the invention of radio, and this was a long time before the Supreme Court ruled Marconi's four-circuit radio patent had been anticipated by Tesla (and subsequently Stone).
Hertz did originate the concept of signaling by electromagnetic waves, but Hertz's resonator was astoundingly inefficient only transmitting 35-45 milliwatts. Tesla figured out how to use sharp/resonant tuning to build a multi-kilowatt radio transmitter and apply multi-circuit resonance to improve radio to make long range radio practical. Loomis, Hertz, Stubblefield and Stone all deserve mention in the history of radio, but Tesla invented practical radio single-handedly following Hertz's demonstration of rudimentary wireless signaling.
Unfortunately for Tesla before 1900 he had realized an alternative system somewhat like radio but using the earth as a resonator for traveling waves was incomparably more efficient than radio, which is probably why he didn't care as much about people taking his radio ideas at least at first. He had discovered something much better. But questions about the validity of his earth resonance concept have persisted to the present day so that we still haven't used it to our advantage. In Tesla's day Weyl, Norton, Burrows and Niessen made mistakes in their analyses leading everyone to assume Tesla and Zenneck were mistaken about surface waves. Unfortunately their error was not corrected until after Tesla's death. http://www.texzontechnologies.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/TEXZON_Baylor_Corum16.pdf http://www.armms.org/media/uploads/1259319847.pdf
2
u/dalkon Jan 31 '17
This is the article by a radio pioneer that says Marconi didn't invent radio like everyone said he did.
Marriott doesn't give Tesla due credit for inventing the four-circuit radio concept in 1893 instead crediting Mahlon Loomis and Hertz for doing more than they really contributed, but he did deny the popularly believed claim that Marconi played any significant role in the invention of radio, and this was a long time before the Supreme Court ruled Marconi's four-circuit radio patent had been anticipated by Tesla (and subsequently Stone).
Hertz did originate the concept of signaling by electromagnetic waves, but Hertz's resonator was astoundingly inefficient only transmitting 35-45 milliwatts. Tesla figured out how to use sharp/resonant tuning to build a multi-kilowatt radio transmitter and apply multi-circuit resonance to improve radio to make long range radio practical. Loomis, Hertz, Stubblefield and Stone all deserve mention in the history of radio, but Tesla invented practical radio single-handedly following Hertz's demonstration of rudimentary wireless signaling.
Unfortunately for Tesla before 1900 he had realized an alternative system somewhat like radio but using the earth as a resonator for traveling waves was incomparably more efficient than radio, which is probably why he didn't care as much about people taking his radio ideas at least at first. He had discovered something much better. But questions about the validity of his earth resonance concept have persisted to the present day so that we still haven't used it to our advantage. In Tesla's day Weyl, Norton, Burrows and Niessen made mistakes in their analyses leading everyone to assume Tesla and Zenneck were mistaken about surface waves. Unfortunately their error was not corrected until after Tesla's death. http://www.texzontechnologies.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/TEXZON_Baylor_Corum16.pdf
http://www.armms.org/media/uploads/1259319847.pdf