He did not display the aggressive energy so common with many promising youths. But though he was quiet, he was not slothful. He entered into his studies with a determination and an application that brought to him great results. He was a student and a thinker. Any scientific book or paper which came before him was eagerly devoured. It was this habit of careful and persistent study that made it possible for Marconi to accomplish such wonderful things at an early age.
Marconi had learned of the Hertzian waves. It occurred to him that by their aid wireless telegraphy might be accomplished. The boy saw the wonderful possibilities; he dreamed dreams of how these waves might carry messages from city to city, from ship to shore, and from continent to continent without wires. He realized his own youth and inexperience, and it seemed certain to him that many able scientists had had the same vision and must be struggling toward its attainment. For a year Marconi dreamed those dreams, studying the books and papers which would tell him more of these wonderful waves. Each week he expected the news that wireless telegraphy had been established, but the news never came. Finally he concluded that others, despite their greater opportunities, had not been so far-seeing as he had thought.
Marconi attacked the problem himself with the dogged persistence and the studious care so characteristic of him. He began his experiments upon his father's farm, the elder Marconi encouraging the youth and providing him with funds with which to purchase apparatus. He set up poles at the opposite sides of the garden and on them mounted the simple sending and receiving instruments which were then available, using plates of tin for his aerials. He set up a simple spark-gap, as had Hertz, and used a receiving device little more elaborate. A Morse telegraph-key was placed in circuit with the spark-gap. When the key was held down for a longer period a long spark passed between the brass knobs of the spark-gap and a dash was thus transmitted. When the key was depressed for a shorter period a dot in the Morse code was sent forth. After much work and adjustment Marconi was able to send a message across the garden. Others had accomplished this for similar distances, but they lacked Marconi's imagination and persistence, and failed to carry their experiments further. To the young Irish-Italian this was but a starting-point.
[Illustration: GUGLIELMO MARCONI
Photographed in the uniform of an officer in the Italian army]
Marconi quickly found that the receiver was the least effective part of the existing apparatus. The waves spread in all directions from the sending station and become feebler and feebler as the distance increases. To make wireless telegraphy effective over any considerable distance a highly efficient and extremely sensitive receiving device is necessary. Some special means of detecting the feeble currents was necessary. The coherer was the solution. As early as 1870 a Mr. S.A. Varley, an Englishman, had discovered that when he endeavored to send a current through a mass of carbon granules the tiny particles arranged themselves in order under the influence of the electric current, and offered a free path for the passage of the current. When shaken apart they again resisted the flow of current until it became powerful enough to cause them to again arrange themselves into a sort of bridge for its passage. Thus was the principle of the coherer discovered.
An Italian scientist, Professor Calzecchi-Onesti, carried these experiments still further. He used various substances in place of the carbon granules and showed that some of them will arrange themselves so as to allow the passage of a current under the influence of the spark setting up the Hertzian waves. Professor E. Branly, of the Catholic University of Paris, took up this work in 1890. He arranged metal filings in a small glass tube six inches long and arranged a tapper to disarrange the filings after they had been brought together under the influence of the spark.
With the Branly coherer as the basis Marconi sought to make improvements which would result in the detector he was seeking. For his powder he used nickel, mixed with a small proportion of fine silver filings. This he placed between silver plugs in a small glass tube. Platinum wires were connected to the silver plugs and brought out at the opposite ends of the tube. It required long study to determine just how to adjust the plugs between which the powder was loosely arranged. If the particles were pressed together too tightly they would not fall apart readily enough under the influence of the tapper. If too much space was allowed they would not cohere readily enough. Marconi also discovered that a larger proportion of silver in the powder and a smaller amount between the plugs increased the sensitiveness of the receiver. Yet he found it well not to have it too sensitive lest it cohere for every stray current and so give false signals.
Under the influence of the electric waves set up from the spark-gap those tiny particles so arranged themselves that they would readily carry a current between the plugs. By placing these plugs with their platinum terminals in circuit with a local battery the current from this local battery was given a passage through the coherer by the action of the electric waves coming through the ether. While these waves themselves were too feeble to operate a receiving mechanism, they were strong enough to arrange the particles of the sensitive metal in the tube in order, so that the current from the local battery could pass through them. This current operated a telegraph relay which in turn operated a Morse receiving instrument. An electrical tapper was also arranged in this circuit so that it would strike the tube a light blow after each long or short wave representing a dot or a dash had been received. Thus the particles were disarranged, ready to array themselves when the next wave came through the ether and so form the bridge over which the stronger local circuit could convey the signal.
Marconi further discovered that the most effective arrangement was to run a wire from one terminal of the coherer into the ground, and from the other to an elevated metal plate or wire. The waves coming through the ether were received by the elevated wire and were conducted down to the coherer. Experimenting with his apparatus on the posts in the garden, he discovered that an increase in the height of the wire greatly increased the receiving distance.