December 12 1901 Marconi makes first transatlantic radio transmission and reception.
Towards the end of the 1897th century Bolognese physicist Augusto Righi began to become interested in studying electromagnetic waves, a work that culminated with the publication of the volume ′′ The Optics of Electrical Obscillations ′′ (1897). Righi taught for more than thirty years at the University of Bologna where a young man of good family, and without a regular school career, could attend his lessons. That young man was William Marconi.
Marconi probably immediately understood the potential of the oscillator-receiver system and began self-taught conducting experiments in radio wave transmission, first at reduced distances and then ever greater. The first great success was achieved when radio signals crossed the Channel, exceeding the distance of 51 km. But how could we have done more?
It was well known that electromagnetic waves spread in a straight line, so it was permissible to overcome major obstacles and radio signals could be picked up. But how did we behave when Earth's warp was the obstacle to face? It was thought, rightly, that the signal travelling a not negligible distance would significantly diminish and that the receiver wouldn't catch any waves.
In 1901, Marconi organized one of the most expensive and important experiments of his life: he installed two radio antennas one in Cornwall (southwestern Great Britain) and one in St. John's, on Canadian island of Newfoundland. At 12 pm on 12 December Marconi receives the three dots of the letter S transmitted by the radio station in Cornwall. The signal is heard and travelled a distance of 3.000 km! It's the first transatlantic telegraphic transmission and it's the official birth of the radio; the Times talks about the experiment as ′′ the greatest scientific achievement of the era ". How is this even possible? Is the theory wrong? Actually the answer was given a few years later, around 1924, and it's the discovery of the ionosphere. In fact, the ionosphere acts like a mirror and makes the wave ′′ bounce
During the years of the experiments Marconi was unaware of the presence of the ionosphere and there are many questions about his experimental method. In fact Marconi received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 ′′ in recognition of his contribution to the development of wireless telegraphy ", but he never earned his degree in physics.
Let's conclude with Emilio's words:
′′ This is why it doesn't always happen that those who know things see right and those who don't know them wrong. Not all the time! Because he was happy with the radio, he tried to repeat the same feat with radar and his ignorance betrayed him there ′′ [anonymous]