Slashdot Mirror
100 Years of Radio
kubla2000 writes: "As CNN dutifully reports, January 23 marks the anniversary of the first long distance radio transmission by Guglielmo Marconi thereby crediting him as the inventor of the radio. I spend a fair bit of time in Poland and was surprised to hear on a children's television quiz show that there were two correct answers to the question, "Who is the father of radio". The other correct answer, was Alexander Popov. Still others would argue that the true father of radio was
Nikola Tesla. So in fact, we're witnessing something between the 100th and the 107th anniversary of the birth of radio. Whichever it is, I think that human ingenuity has shown remarkable progress in the last century. From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP. Quite something."
the page on patents is especially interesting. For example, he invented a radio remote control mechanism for a boat in 1898!
I tend to side with Tesla on this as far as the radio question goes. These paragraphs from the soon to be slashed website on Tesla perhaps summarize it best:
Despite the fact that almost every book mentions Guglielmo Marconi as the inventor of radio, the only thing Marconi did seems to be nothing more than reproducing apparati Nikola Tesla had registered years ago. Marconi copied Tesla, made some modifications, built a large industry producing radio devices in Europe and spent huge amounts to advertise his supposed invention.
Nine months after Tesla's death, the Supreme Patent Court of the USA decides that Nikola Tesla must be considered the father of wireless transmission and radio. Justifying its decision the court notes that in Marconi's related Patent (Íï. 764772 of 1904) there is nothing new not having been earlier published and registered by Tesla. The Court considered Marconi's claim that he did not knew of Tesla's patents false
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