L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 24 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE D ear Readers, April marks the 143rd anniversary of the birth of the great Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. April also marks the month when Guglielmo Marconi, born in Bologna April 25, 1874, was hailed worldwide as a benefactor and hero to humanity. The supposedly "unsinkable" luxury liner Titanic sank April 14, 1912, and Marconi's invention "ship to shore" radio helped save many lives. Of the 2340 passengers and crew more than 1,500 perished. Many were women and children immigrants on cheap "steerage" passage. After that awful April night when the "indestructible" Titanic hit a massive iceberg, quickly sinking in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, Marconi's invention wireless telegraphy caused him to be hailed as the "World's Greatest Benefactor" by the President of the United States Howard William Taft. The Titanic's "Marconi Wireless" operator himself went down with the ship, but not before he sent out an S.O.S. signal of distress. The survivors were picked up by the S.S. Carpathia, another radio equipped ship which had heard the distress call. Undoubtedly hundreds more passengers could have been saved if these other ships which were nearer to the Titanic had been radio equipped. In 1906, David Sarnoff (who became Chairman of RCA in 1930) began working for the American Marconi Company and by 1919, had become a top wireless expert. He preferred the term radio to "wireless telegraphy" because the signals which were sent out radiated in all directions. Sarnoff, at age 21, was appointed manager and operator of the American Marconi wireless station located in the Wanamaker Department Store in New York, then the most powerful commercial radio station in the world. On April 14, 1912, while he was listening idly to dots and dashes, he suddenly picked up on this shocking message: "S.S. Titanic ran into an iceberg . Sinking fast". This message had come from the S.S. Olympic, which was nearby in the North Atlantic Ocean, 1,400 miles away from New York. The Titanic, a brand-new luxury liner making her maiden voyage to the United States had hundreds of prominent Americans aboard. David signaled the S.S. Olympic to provide additional information. "Rush details, including names", he requested. David notified the New York newspapers of the grim tragedy. Reporters, relatives and friends of passengers aboard the Titanic crowded around his station for further information, Within hours, the news spread across the country. That same year, Congress passed a law which made it mandatory for all ships carrying passengers to install radio equipment. It also required ship owners to employ licensed persons to operate the radio equipment. Prior to the Titanic tragedy, Marconi had great opposition and efforts to discredit him from the cable companies (which then charged 25 cents per word to send telegrams), the "ship-to- shore" maritime business was the Marconi Company's financial lifeline. The terrible fate of the Titanic in 1912 touched the world, and today, 105 years later, its memory is still vivid. *** Marconi's wireless telegraphy invention, (radio) may have caused him to be hailed as the "World Greatest Benefactor" by our 27th president, William Howard Taft, but inadvertently, Marconi became a "great benefactor" to thousands of little Italian American Kids (also known on the East Coast as WOPs and in the West as DAGOs) who attended public schools in the United States during the 1940s, 50s and mid 1960s. When Children reported the name calling to their parents or grandparents, they were often told that while the ancestors of their mostly Anglo Saxon name callers were living in caves, their "Italian" ancestors were spreading art, music and civilization to the world. Some also claimed that Antonio Meucci had invented the telephone and another Italian, Guglielmo Marconi had invented the radio. Who were we Italian American "Bambini" going to believe, Papa and his "paesani" off the boat or the teacher and her history book off the bookshelf? I for one was conflicted, because in my fourth grade history book "The Story of America", Unit 14, Our Nation Grows Up, "The Magic Effects of Machinery", issued by the California State printing office in Sacramento it said: "The Telephone. The telephone, which carries the human voice over a wire, was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, a teacher of speech in Boston University. This was four years after Morse, the inventor of telegraphy, died. Professor Bell was a Scotchman. He was educated in Scotland and England, but his studies and experiments that gave us the telephone were carried on in the United States." (Antonio Meucci was later confirmed as telephone inventor. U.S. Congressional Record.) With Marconi, there was no "who are you supposed to believe drama", for my history book said: "About the end of the nineteen century, William Marconi, an Italian, invented a way to send messages through the air without the use of telegraph wires. It is known as "wireless telegraphy", or simply "wireless". This is another marvelous advance in long distance communication. Around 1925 the radio came into general use in the United States. The radio is a sort of wireless telephone. It enables people hear speeches and music over great distances and it has come to be of great importance in carrying on business and education." Seeing Marconi's name and his invention printed in Public School history books began to give thousands of Italian American parents a glimmer of credibility. *** Young Guglielmo loved to read and the library in the Villa Griffone where he lived contained a wide selection of books. From about the age of ten, Guglielmo began to work his way through this store of knowledge. From an early age Guglielmo Marconi was familiar with Bologna's scientific heritage, and at Villa Griffone began his first experiments with the mysterious forces of electricity. Bologna had water- powered silk-weaving mills long before the Industrial Revolution transformed British industry in the late eighteenth century. Bologna had a distinguished history of scientific discovery, and was the home of eighteenth century pioneer of electrical forces Luigi Galvani. As a young boy, little Guglielmo was fascinated by electricity and liked to play with batteries. His father, Giuseppe, thought it was a waste of time, but his mother encouraged his experiments. Marconi was also fascinated by the work of American inventor Samuel Morse, who had developed the telegraph and Morse code and by Benjamin Franklin's invention of the lightning conductor. By 1896, at age 21, he had patented the first wireless telegraph. Following the Titanic tragedy in 1912. Marconi developed improved crystal set technology and by 1921, a two tube radio with head set, that was soon replaced with a loudspeaker so more than one person could listen. Marconi kept adding new ideas to his wireless radio and by 1933 installed the first radio station at the Vatican. His invention helped bring radio music and entertainment in our homes. The Marconi Room was the place where wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride held communication with ships and shore over a Marconi tran- smitter.

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