Professor Hidetsugu Yagi. 1886 – 1976.
























Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872)

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, l’inventore della telegrafia, nacque il 27 aprile 1791 a Charlestown Massachusetts e morì di polmonite a quasi ottant’anni il 2 aprile 1872 a Poughkeepsie (New York). Uomo dal multiforme ingegno, tanto da essere anche pittore, è stato però paradossalmente anche uno studente pigro e privo di volontà, i cui interessi convergevano solo nell’elettricità e nella pittura di ritratti in miniatura.


Malgrado la svogliatezza di fondo, Morse si laureò comunque presso il collegio di Yale nel 1810, mentre l’anno dopo si recò a Londra dove intraprese sempre più seriamente lo studio della pittura. Tornato negli Stati Uniti nel 1815, una decina di anni dopo fondò con altri artisti la “Società di belle arti” e successivamente la “National Accademy of Design”. Attirato dall’arte italiana e dall’immenso patrimonio artistico celato sul suolo italico, tornò nel Bel Paese nel 1829 dove visitò molte città. Con l’occasione, volle visitare anche la Francia, dove rimase affascinato dalle molte bellezze di quella nazione.


Ad ogni modo, il soggiorno italiano risvegliò la sua vena creativa, tanto che arrivò a dipingere una gran quantità di tele. Ma anche la sua curiosità scientifica era tutt’altro che assopita. E’ proprio mentre rientrava negli Stati Uniti nel 1832 a bordo della nave bastimento Sully che, durante la traversata, si interrogò su di un metodo efficace per comunicare anche in condizioni difficili. Una soluzione la intravide nell’elettromagnetismo e ne fu tanto persuaso che alcune settimane dopo si mise a costruire il primo apparato telegrafico, composto inizialmente dalla sola cornice di un quadro recuperata dal suo studio di pittura, alcune ruote in legno ricavate da un vecchio orologio e un’elettrocalamita (dono di un suo vecchio professore).


Ma è solamente nel 1835 che questo rudimentale telegrafo, dopo innumerevoli tentativi, fu ultimato e sperimentato.


Nello stesso anno Morse entrò a far parte del corpo insegnante dell’Università di New York come professore di storia dell’arte, andando ad abitare in una casa a Washington Square. Qui installò un laboratorio e progettò un trasmettitore automatico con il quale sperimentò il prototipo del codice che poi prese il suo nome. Due anni dopo Morse trovò due soci che lo aiutarono a perfezionare il telegrafo di sua invenzione: Leonard Gale, un professore di scienze dell’Università di New York, e Alfred Vail. Con l’aiuto dei suoi nuovi soci, Morse nel 1837 richiese un brevetto per il nuovo apparecchio, a cui si aggiunse successivamente l’invenzione di un codice punto-linea che sostituiva le lettere e che rendeva più fulminea la comunicazione. Tranne alcune successive modifiche di dettaglio, era infatti nato il codice Morse.

Il 24 Maggio 1844 fu inaugurata la prima linea telegrafica che collegava Washington con Baltimora. In quell’anno il caso volle che proprio a Baltimora si tenesse la Convenzione del Partito Whig e fu proprio in quelle circostanze che la sua invenzione ebbe una risonanza straordinaria, tale da renderlo finalmente famoso, grazie al fatto che telegrafando a Washington, i risultati della Convenzione arrivarono due ore prima del treno che ne portava le notizie.


In breve, l’uso della telegrafia, in parallelo con la quasi coetanea invenzione della radio da parte di Marconi, si diffuse in tutto il mondo con un successo incontrastato, grazie al fatto che con essa era possibile comunicare a grandi distanze con mezzi tutto sommato semplici. In Italia la prima linea telegrafica fu realizzata nel 1847 e collegava Livorno con Pisa. L’invenzione dell’alfabeto Morse, poi, ha rappresentato una svolta nella storia dell’umanità, nella sicurezza, nelle comunicazioni in tempo reale. La storia della marineria, civile e militare, è piena di esempi di grandi salvataggi realizzati grazie al Telegrafo senza fili.


Una curiosità: per la prima volta dopo 60 anni viene aggiunto un simbolo all’alfabeto in codice inventato da Samuel Morse; è il 3 maggio 2004 il giorno del battesimo della chiocciola telematica ‘@’.



Samuel Finley Breese Morse was a well-known portrait painter who turned to science in mid-career and pioneered the electric telegraph.

Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791, Morse was the oldest son of Jedidiah Morse, an eminent geographer and Congregational clergyman. Heattended Yale, where he developed an interest in painting miniatures and attending lectures on electricity. After graduation, Morse sailed to England, where he studied painting from 1811 to 1815. On his return to Boston, Massachusetts, Morse opened a studio and soon found that portraiture was the only typeof art that would sell. Within a few years, he developed a distinguished reputation as a portrait painter.

Burdened with financial concerns and mourning the successive deaths of his young wife, his father, and his mother, Morse returned to Europe in 1829 to continue his artistic studies. His return voyage to the United States in 1832 aboard the Sully became the turning point of his life. A conversation with fellow passengers–one of whom was the chemist Charles T. Jackson (1805-1880)–about experiments with electromagnetism piqued Morse’s imagination. He immediately thought of sending messages over a wire via electricity, and spent the rest of the voyage sketching preliminary ideas. Morse’s interest in developingthe telegraph, coupled with disappointments in his artistic career, promptedhim to give up painting in 1837. Morse built some prototypes of his telegraphin 1835, but his lack of background in science hobbled his efforts. At thistime Morse was Professor of Arts and Design at the University of the City ofNew York. He turned to a fellow professor in the university’s chemistry department, Leonard Gale, for help. Gale showed Morse how to improve both his electromagnet and his battery. Gale also introduced Morse to Joseph Henry, who freely shared his impressive knowledge about electromagnetism. Morse was now able to invent an electromagnetic relay system, which renewed the current along a line from relay to relay and made long-distance message transmission possible; he filed an intent to patent it in 1837.

In September of that year Morse met young Alfred Vail while demonstrating histelegraph in New York. The two men became partners, and Vail made many practical improvements to Morse’s device and to the code used to transmit messages, which became known as the Morse code. Also in 1837, Morse applied for a grant offered by the United States Congress to construct a telegraph system. Seven long years of discouragement and poverty followed for Morse until finally,in the closing session of the 1843 Congress, he secured a $30,000 appropriation to build a telegraph line between Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. With the aid of Vail and Ezra Cornell, Morse did just that, sending his famous first message “What hath God wrought!” on May 24, 1844.

Morse and Vail had intended to sell all rights in their telegraph to the United States government for $100,000, but Congress rejected their offer. The partners, along with Amos Kendall, then formed the Magnetic Telegraph Company todevelop telegraph lines privately. Most of Morse’s attention was taken up byprolonged and contentious litigation over patent rights to the telegraph, one of his opponents being Jackson. During this controversy, Morse unfortunately denied that Henry had ever helped him. Morse’s patent rights were upheld bythe United States Supreme Court in 1854.

The success of the telegraph brought Morse fame and wealth. His interests turned to politics; he supported the nativist movement, opposed abolitionism, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1854. In 1857-58 Morse was an electrician for Cyrus Field’s (1819-1892) attempt to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable. He built an estate near Poughkeepsie, New York, called Locust Grove (a historic landmark today), and enjoyed the company of his second wife, whom he had married in 1848, and his many children and grandchildren. He was a founderand trustee of Vassar College, and served in 1861 as the president of the National Academy of Design, which he had helped found in 1826 and led as president from 1826 until 1845. In his later years, Morse was a noted philanthropist. The telegraph operators of the United States honored Morse with a bronze statue in New York’s Central Park in 1871. Morse died in New York on April 2, 1872.


Alexander Stepanovich Popov (1859-1906)

















Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894)

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz è stato il primo a dimostrare le onde elettromagnetiche.

Nato ad Amburgo nel 1857, lo studioso Hertz mostra fin da ragazzo la sua particolare predisposizione per lo studio delle scienze delle lingue straniere.

All’Università, che frequenta a Berlino, ha la fortuna di avere tra i suoi professori gli scienziati Kirchhoff ed Helmholtz. Dopo aver conseguito la laurea, si dedica con passione alla carriera universitaria, rivestendo il ruolo di direttore di fisica teorica.

Heinrich Rudolph Hertz è noto per aver scoperto una particolare tipologia di onde elettromagnetiche, le stesse che più tardi Guglielmo Marconi utilizza nell’ingegnosa invenzione della radiotelegrafia.

In precedenza, il fisico inglese Carl Maxwell aveva studiato ipotizzato l’esistenza di tali onde, studiandone la caratteristiche, ma soltanto a livello teorico. Le “onde hertziane” hanno le stesse proprietà di quelle luminose: si muovono alla medesima velocità (300 mila km. al secondo), danno vita ai fenomeni di rifrazione, interferenza, polarizzazione.

Hertz raggiunge la popolarità nel campo della fisica a partire dal 1880, quando pubblica uno studio riguardante l’elettricità in movimento, in particolare sull’inerzia.

Nel 1887, chiamato a far parte della Royal Society di Londra, lo studioso tedesco fornisce la dimostrazione pratica della teoria delle onde, il cui precursore è stato appunto Maxwell.

Ma Hertz aggiunge elementi importanti, quali la relazione esistente tra la luce e l’elettricità, il modo in cui le onde si propagano, le proprietà dei gas rarefatti. Ad Hertz, inoltre, si attribuisce il merito di aver prodotto oscillazioni di tre metri di lunghezza.

A tal fine, lo scienziato crea un apparecchio specifico, chiamato appunto “oscillatore”. La rifrazione delle onde elettromagnetiche viene invece dimostrata tramite l’utilizzo di un prisma di pece.

Hertz scopre che gli oggetti carichi di elettricità perdono la carica quando li si espone ad una luce ultravioletta. Tale principio sarà poi ripreso e perfezionato da Albert Einstein.

Lo sperimentatore delle onde elettromagnetiche muore a Bonn nel 1894, all’età di trentasei anni. Nel 1925 suo nipote vince il Premio Nobel per la fisica. Sono trascorsi 155 anni dalla sua nascita.


The German physicist Heinrich Hertz is widely known for being one of the first scientists to broadcast and receive electromagnetic waves, but is also important for his contributions to the field of optics. Most notably, Hertz was the first investigator ever to observe the phenomenon that would eventually come to be known as the photoelectric effect. The discovery of this phenomenon, which is generally defined as the emission of electrons from a surface exposed to electromagnetic radiation above a certain threshold frequency, had a tremendous influence on the perception of light, which was just beginning to be understood in terms of a duality between waves and particles late in Hertz’s lifetime, and which would not come to be widely accepted until many years after his death.

Heinrich Hertz was born on February 22, 1857 in Hamburg, Germany, but studied in a number of different cities, including Dresden, Munich, and Berlin, under a number of prestigious scientists, such as Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff. Hemholtz reportedly had a particularly strong influence on the young scientist, who would continue to study with him for several years after he received his doctorate degree magna cum laude in 1880. In 1883, however, Hertz accepted a position as lecturer of theoretical physics at the University of Kiel. He was appointed as a full professor at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic in 1885, a post he retained until 1889, when he became a professor of physics at the University of Bonn. It was at Karlsruhe that Hertz carried out many of his most important experiments.

In the late 1800s, a number of physicists attempted to detect and generate electromagnetic waves in order to prove James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which was published in 1865. The first to actually accomplish this feat was Heinrich Hertz, who constructed an oscillator formed from brass knobs. Each of the knobs was connected to a high voltage induction coil and was separated from the other knob by a small gap, over which sparks could travel. If Maxwell’s theory was correct, Hertz postulated, when a spark created a conducting path between the brass knobs, electromagnetic radiation would be emitted as charge rapidly vacillated back and forth between them. To detect the radiation Hertz built a simple receiver from copper wire with a brass knob located at one end and the other end formed into a point. The wire was bent into a circle so that the knob was very close to, but not touching, the pointed end of the wire. The design enabled the presence of charge to be detected through the observation of a spark crossing the gap between the knob and point. Utilizing these basic instruments, Hertz was able to clearly demonstrate that electromagnetic waves did exist and that they travel, as suggested by Maxwell, at the speed of light.

In the course of his experiments with electromagnetic radiation, Hertz did encounter some problems, primarily involving the detection of the small spark produced in the receiver. To aid in the visibility of the spark, he sometimes enclosed the receiver in a dark case, which he observed had an unusual effect on the maximum length of the spark, making it smaller than when no case was utilized. His findings led him to more thoroughly investigate the matter, resulting in his determination that the spark produced was stronger if it was exposed to ultraviolet light. Though he offered no explanation for this puzzling matter, other scientists recognized the import of the discovery, and, by 1899, J. J. Thomson ascertained that the ultraviolet light caused the emission of electrons, hence the more vigorous spark. This phenomenon, which was later dubbed the photoelectric effect, is central to the modern understanding of modern physics.

Although his contributions to science were significant, Heinrich Hertz would likely have had an even more fruitful career if his life had not ended prematurely. At the age of 37, the eminent scientist, who made great scientific leaps while maintaining his characteristic modesty, died of blood poisoning. He was survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and two daughters. The common unit of frequency, Hertz (Hz; cycles per second), was named in his honor and became officially included in the metric system in 1933.

Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge Biography




Il coherer venne poi perfezionato da Edouard Branly.




Death: August 22, 1940 in Amersham, Wiltshire, England






















Maximilian Kolbe (SP3RN) Patron saint of amateur radio



Father Maximillian Kolbe, SP3RN is recognized by the Catholic church as the patron saint of amateur radio. After the Polish occupation and in the early years of World War II he used his station to report on the atrocities being committed by the Nazis on the Poles. In the end he volunteered to be sent to a concentration camp instead of another man.




Kolbe’s family moved to Pabianice, where his parents initially worked as basket weavers. Later, his mother worked as a midwife (often donating her services), and operated a shop in part of their rented house, where she sold groceries and household goods. Julius Kolbe worked at the Krushe and Ender Mill and also worked on a parcel of rented land where he grew vegetables. In 1914, Julius joined Józef Piłsudski‘s Polish Legions and was captured by the Russians and hanged for fighting for the independence of a partitioned Poland.[citation needed]




WATCH THE VIDEO OF Maximilian Kolbe

The living voice of Guglielmo Marconi


Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna April 25 th 1874, child of Joseph Marconi, an Italian gentleman that had married a young Irish girl Annie Jameson. Guglielmo didn’t receive a formal education, showing little interest in his studies didn’t complete the course in the technical school, but he promises very well in physics studying to house under the guide of the Prof. Vincent Rosa of Livorno.To the twenty year-old age the young genius starts to make experiments as amateur, that will bring it in little time to the invention of the telegraphy without threads. These experiments are begun in the attic of “Villa Griffon” of Pontecchio, the villa of country of his father, situated in the administrative district of Stone.Following mathematician Clerk Maxwell’s initial studies and the experiments of Heinrich Hertz, Marconi realizes a practical and intelligent system of distance communication without the employment of threads or you extracts voters.Marconi invents, in this way, the system spar-earth. The signals are received with success to a distance of 2400 ms and finally, at the end of September, the transmission overcomes the obstacle of a hill; this historical experiment, concluded with the famous hit of rifle, celebrate it “birth of the radio.” Marconi is honored some Nobel Prize for the Physics in 1909 to the 35 year-old age.On 20 July 1937 he dies in Rome

The living voice of Guglielmo Marconiyoutube_play_icon