Within the history of radio, many people were involved in the invention of radio technology that continues to evolve in modern wireless communication systems today.Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy", first invented by David Edward Hughes. Later, during the early commercial development of wireless technology that followed the first Hughes demonstrations, highly publicized disputes arose over the issue of who could claim credit for the invention of radio. The enormous publicity and commercial importance of these disputes overshadowed the much earlier work of James Clerk Maxwell, David Edward Hughes, Heinrich Hertz and Jagadish Chandra Bose.
Below is a brief selection of important events and individuals related to the development of radio, from 1860 to 1910 (click to show timeline).
<timeline> ImageSize = width:777 height:375 DateFormat = YYYY Period = from:1860 till:1910 PlotArea = width:716 height:333 left:40 bottom:20 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical order:reverse ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1860 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:1860 PlotData=
Guglielmo Marconi (Italian pronunciation: [ɡuʎˈʎɛːlmo marˈkoːni]; 25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". Much of Marconi's work in radio transmission was built upon previous experimentation and the commercial exploitation of ideas by others such as Hertz, Maxwell, Faraday, Popov, Lodge, Fessenden, Stone, Bose, and Tesla. As an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of the The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in 1897, Marconi succeeded in making a commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and physicists. In 1924, he was ennobled as Marchese Marconi.
Marconi was born in Bologna on April 25, 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian landowner, and his Irish wife, Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in the County Wexford, Ireland and granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons. Marconi was educated privately in Bologna in the lab of Augusto Righi, in Florence at the Istituto Cavallero and, later, in Livorno. As a child Marconi did not do well in school.Baptized as a Catholic, he was also a member of the Anglican Church, being married into it; however, he still received a Catholic annulment.
Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Derbyshire was born in Coventry, daughter of Emma (née Dawson) and Edward Derbyshire. of Cedars Avenue, Coundon, Coventry, a sheet-metal worker. She had one sibling, a sister, who died young. Her father died in 1965 and her mother in 1994.
During the Second World War, immediately after the Coventry Blitz in 1940, she was moved to Preston, Lancashire for safety, where her parents had moved from and where most of her surviving relatives still live. She was very bright and, by the age of four, was teaching others in her class to read and write in primary school, but said "The radio was my education". Her parents bought her a piano when she was eight years old. Educated at Barr's Hill Grammar School from 1948 to 1956, she was accepted at both Oxford and Cambridge, "quite something for a working class girl in the 'fifties, where only one in 10 (students) were female", won a scholarship to study mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge but, apart from some success in the mathematical theory of electricity, she claims she did badly and after one year switched to music, graduating in 1959 with an MA in Mathematics and Music and specialising in medieval and modern music history. Her other principal qualification was LRAM in pianoforte.
Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. He was an important contributor to the use of commercial electricity, and is best known for developing the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. His many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on the theories of electromagnetic technology discovered by Michael Faraday. Tesla's patents and theoretical work also formed the basis of wireless communication and the radio.
Born in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić, present day Croatia), Tesla was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. Because of his 1894 demonstration of short range wireless communication through radio and as the eventual victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this time, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices in 1891, and aspired to intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.
Todd Allen (born Ottawa, Ontario) is a comedian, writer and producer based out of Vancouver, British Columbia and Los Angeles, California.
Todd Allen grew up in Victoria, British Columbia with one year stints living in both Tokyo (1987) and Honolulu (1994). Shortly after moving to Vancouver in his early twenties, Allen started performing stand-up comedy in local comedy clubs.
His comedy act is continuously featured on television and radio. Past appearances include: The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS, Comedy Now on CTV and the Comedy Network, The Halifax Comedy Festival on CBC Television, Madly Off In All Directions on CBC Radio and XM Satellite Radio.
He has been featured at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, the Uno Festival in Victoria, and the Vancouver Comedy Festival. He made guest appearances on the television shows Men in Trees on ABC, Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star and Animal Miracles.
Allen also worked briefly as a writer for the television show "This Hour has 22 Minutes." In 2008, he won a Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) Award for his work on 22 Minutes. He is the creator and producer of numerous comedy game shows, currently in development in the U.S. and in Canada. His one-man show, Who the Hell is Todd Allen?, tours in theaters and festivals across North America.