These days we are celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of that genius Guglielmo Marconi. On 25 April 1874, a man was born in Bologna who made history with his creativity and intelligence. He was responsible for the invention of wireless telegraphy via radio waves, which earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909.
Since he was a boy, Guglielmo spent entire days in the Bachi room, in the attic of Villa Griffone, dealing with copper wires, metals and circuits. It was there that he built the first rudimentary devices for the transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves, which he positioned at an increasingly greater distance inside the villa to send the signal a little further each time.
The “rifle shot” experiment, fired by his brother to warn him that he had received the signal sent from the attic of Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, the Marconis’ country residence, beyond the Cappuccini Hill. The transmission of signals over a distance by electromagnetic means works. Thus begins his mission to increase the distance further and further. days and nights of experiments and tests, many of which in Liguria where he spent many years.
In the Port of Genoa, at 11.03 on 26 March 1930. Marconi on board his ship Elettra was the protagonist of a historic moment in the progress of the world. All he had to do was press a button from his ship anchored a stone’s throw from the Lantern to send pulses into the ether so that 22,000 km away, Sydney’s lights would turn on. Hello Australia »he heard. It is Guglielmo Marconi, «speaking on board the yacht, Elettra, at Genoa, Italy».
Guglielmo Marconi spent a long time in Santa Margherita, in whose bay the ship Elettra was moored between 1931 and 1936. Even today in the Hotel Miramare you can find the suite dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi: room 105 where he stayed here in 1933 while he was planning the transmission of the first radiotelegraph and radiotelephone signal in history right from the hotel terrace.
In Sestri Levante there is Torre Marconi where the Nobel Prize winner conducted numerous of his experiments between 1932 and 1934. On 30 July 1934, Guglielmo Marconi, in the presence of technicians, officers of the Italian and English Navy and numerous representatives of the press, successfully crowned his experiments on blind navigation , right through the radio beacon installed on the tower,
Marconi also spent some time in Montallegro, on the heights of Rapallo where he had placed a repeater, through which he carried out his last experiments, 9 months before his death. In fact, on 11 and 12 November 1936 a four-way radio telephone conversation took place between the Elettra anchored in Santa Margherita Ligure, New York and two airplanes flying over the American city. But from Rapallo he also returned to connect with Livorno, the city where he began to give shape to his ideas.
An extraordinary character, a genius forced to leave Italy to go to England where they understood him more. But when he returned he loved being in Liguria and it is no coincidence that in the Naval Museum of La Spezia there is the keel of the Elettra which was his home for many years.
