Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian physicist and inventor of wireless telegraph. In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for physics, shared with Ferdinand Braun.
On September 30, 1899, Marconi first utilized his wireless telegraph technology in the U.S., following successful demonstrations in Europe. He set up a transmitter on a passenger ship, the SS Ponce, and an antenna mast on the grounds of the Twin Lights of Navesink, and sent reports to a New York newspaper on the victorious return of Commodore George Dewey from the Spanish-American War’s Battle of Manila Bay. Days later, the system was used again to report on America’s Cup races off Sandy Hook. Marconi would continue to use Monmouth County for many years as a center for development of his wireless telegraphy and radio.
Guglielmo Marconi’s presence in Monmouth County made this region home to many major advancements in science and technology, far too many to list here, but it all started with his breakthrough wireless telegraph system (pictured above). Marconi’s legacy, and much of his early experiments and equipment, are preserved and presented for posterity at the InfoAge Science and Technology Center, (InfoAge.org), 140 Marconi Road, in Wall Township, which was one of the early locations for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, and which later became Camp Evans during the World War II expansion of Fort Monmouth.
Sources:
Touchstone of History. Twin Lights Lighthouse. Available: http://twinlightslighthouse.com/history.html
Guglielmo Marconi. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available: https://www.britannica.com/
Leave a Reply