Youngest son of a well-to-do Italian father and a warm-hearted, witty Irish mother, Guglielmo Marconi might have been a spoiled and idle young man. But, fired by visions of electric waves around the world, he deliberately chose the hard and exacting life of a scientist.

And it was this man who, more than any other individual, was responsible for that scientific wonder—radio—we now take for granted.

To cite some examples: the far-flung shortwave broadcasts that seem so remarkable today, were the subject of Marconi experiments in 1896; the radio compass, which enables today's ships to calculate their position no matter how impenetrable the fog or night through which they travel, was designed by Marconi many years ago; and when today's airplane pilots "ride the beam," they are following an invisible micro-wave pathway which Marconi perfected.

It is true that Marconi's first stuttering spark, crackling from an awkward homemade apparatus to send a message the length of an attic work-room, is a far cry from the precision of today's radio broadcasting. It is also true that Marconi was not the first to send wireless waves the length of a room. But it was Marconi's rare combination of vision and practicality that transformed the spark's aimless stuttering into an orderly succession of dots and dashes—and saw in that first step the vision of music and conversation encircling the globe.

This splendid research and coordination of material on the part of Douglas Coe now brings us a really comprehensive life story of the man.

Complete with diagrams of Marconi's inventions, etc.

From the book