The 1909 Nobel Prize. G. Marconi and K. Braun
Presented by Neil Boucher
July 28, 2009
In 1896, John Trowbridge, a noted researcher in electromagnetism, lamented in his book "What is Electricity" that despite the promise of the new technology it was possible to see the transmitter spark over distances much greater than it could be detected electrically. In the same year a young Marconi was transmitting with his home-brew equipment over a distance of 2 kilometres; and what is more he was transmitting to a receiver behind a hill, something that every well informed researcher at the time knew was impossible!
Had Marconi been better informed of the state of the art, he may never have attempted many of his experiments. Marconi took electromagnetism from a laboratory curiosity that was mainly used to probe the properties of the elusive ether, to wireless telegraphy and thence to radio as we know it today.
For his efforts, which were more engineering than physics, he received the Nobel prize for Physics in 1909. This prize was shared with Karl Braun, who invented the crystal rectifier and the cathode ray oscilloscope.
Neil Boucher is an Electrical Engineer and author of several books on telecommunications including The Cellular Radio Handbook, now in its 4th edition. His books are published by John Wiley, New York. He is currently engaged in the deployment and testing of a non-voice sound recognition system, which is being used across Australia to search for and identify rare parrots in four states by wildlife researchers. This system was developed by SoundID, a company managed by Neil.
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