Guglielmo Marconi: The Story of Radio and How it Made the World a Smaller Place (Scientists Who Have Changed the World S.) - Tapa dura

Part of a series covering the lives of 12 leading scientists, all of whom have made a major contribution to the world around them. The books provide reading on famous lives for children at a formative age. At 20, Guglielmo Marconi dreamed that some day he would send a signal from one end of the world to the other through the air, without any wires. By 23, he had done it. This young man, with little formal scientific education, and working away in his father's attic, confounded some of the foremost scientific brains of his day. At the time, in 1895, the use of electricity was still quite new. Only 14 years earlier it had been used for the first time to light people's homes. Messages could by then be sent quickly and clearly by telephone and telegraph. But both these means of communication had a serious drawback - they required wires for the messages to flow along as electric pulses. Marconi's dreams to send messages without wires seemed like science fiction. Once the breakthrough had been made, Marconi worked quickly and with dogged determination on his experiments. First, he sent messages across the attic. Then down the garden. Then across the valley. And finally, across the oceans. Thanks to his curiosity and stubbornness, there are now satellite TV, commercial radio, laser communications and all the wonders of what has now been called a "global village".