Everything is wireless these days, virtually nothing that was once wired still is; there are wireless speakers and headphones, wireless mobile phone charging, wireless networking, wireless starting for cars and even wireless fridge-freezers. Wireless devices are replacing devices that would have traditionally been wired to something, be it a music player or a mains electricity supply. But this quest for wireless technology is not a new idea, it goes back over one hundred years and the advent of wireless communication and radio.
So, who did invent radio?
Many think that Marconi invented the radio, but that’s not true. Marconi took existing ideas and perfected them, inventing a few of his own related products along the way; but he didn’t invent radio. Don’t get me wrong, he did a tremendous job and achieved something that had never been done before, he made a radio wave travel across the Atlantic ocean and made contact with somebody in the Americas from the shores of the United Kingdom.
So, where does it all begin? Well not with any one person in particular and it was a particularly international affair.
Alessandro Volta (Italian)
In 1799, Volta invented a device to store electricity – the battery. His name was given to the unit of electrical potential.
Hans Christian Oersted (Danish)
The very first principle of wireless communication was discovered in 1821 by Oersted who discovered that an electric current creates a magnetic field around a conductor.
Michael Faraday (British)
Faraday went on to establish the reverse was also possible – moving a conductor in a magnetic field generates an electric current (1831).
James Clerk Maxwell (British)
1873 saw Maxwell present his theory of the electromagnetic field and that electromagnetic waves can travel through space.
Thomas Edison (British)
Edison discovered the phenomenon, in 1883, which saw electrons flow from a heated element to a cooler elect in a vacuum. This was named the Edison effect and was the basis for thermionic valves commonly used in radio equipment up until the 1960s.
Heinrich Hertz (German)
Heinrich Hertz was the first person to demonstrate that he could transmit and receive electrical waves without the use of wires (wirelessly) in 1886. He thought is work was of little use, but his name was given to the measurement of frequency – how many times something changes in a second (the Hertz – Hz).
Oliver Lodge (British)
Born out of a fascination with lightening, Lodge perfected a device in 1894 that allowed current to flow when radio waves were received – it was called the coherer.
Nicola Tesla (Serbian-American)
Tesla pioneered the use of alternating current; a current that flows in one direction and then the other. Not only did this revolutionise the distribution of electric power, it was to form the basis of wireless communications. His Tesla Coil, an inductor, was to become widely used in radios.
Ernst Alexanderson (Swedish)
The Swede developed the first alternator that enabled speech to be transmitted; Morse Code had been the standard mode of wireless communication until then.
Alexander Popov (Russian)
It was Popov that developed the first radio capable of distinguishing morse code.
Guglielmo Marconi (Italian)
Marconi, the father of modern radio, experimented with and perfected what had been discovered before to make wireless communication practical, reliable and marketable. He made the first transatlantic in 1901. What Marconi didn’t know was that his signal was on course to outer space and that it was only the ionosphere saved the day for him by refracting his signal back dow to earth. But that’s another story.
Reginald Fessenden (Canadian)
Fessenden worked on combining low frequency audio waves with high frequency radio waves that could be transmitted and separated at the receiver. This formed the basis for voice communication over radio.
Edwin Armstrong (Canadian)
The FM mode that we use today for short range commercial broadcasts and amateur radio contacts in the 2m and 70cm bands was pioneered by Armstrong. FM improved the quality of transmission no end over the AM mode used previously.