The Will to Succeed

Abstract

This chapter chronicles Guglielmo Marconi's life and inventions. It examines how Marconi worked without respite on an idea he had to send telegraph messages through the ether. Guglielmo Marconi was the son of a wealthy Italian businessman, who lived the life of a country gentleman, and of an Anglo-Irish mother, whose family was the Jameson distillers of Belfast. The chapter first looks at how he improved Heinrich Hertz's spark transmitter and loop aerial receiver. It examines the most remarkable change Marconi made in Hertz's apparatus which came from a chance discovery rather than an adaptation or improvement of existing equipment. The chapter then shifts to discuss the race to control wireless communications. Marconi was, as the chapter argues, the first entrant — and thereby the first leader — in what had become a race. It ultimately explicates Lee de Forest's telephone work, his marriage to Lucille Sheardown, and his encounter with Abraham White.