Old Marconi Patent Inspires Tiny New Gigahertz Antenna

Posted by samzenpus on Monday April 20, 2015 @06:43AM from the getting-small dept.

agent elevator writes Gehan Amaratunga and a group of engineers in England noted that the Guglielmo Marconi's famous British patent application from 1900 had an interesting and little noticed detail. It depicted a transmitter linked to an antenna connected to a coil, which had one end dangling while the RF signal was fed to the middle of the coil. That detail inspired them to develop a way to reduce the size of a GHz antenna without significant transmission loss by using dielectrics as the radio wave emitting material instead of conductors.

2 of 76 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Obviously by Anonymous Coward · 2015-04-20 07:05 · Score: 5, Funny

This means that Guglielmo Marconi's hard work was stolen without compensation and he has no incentive to invent anymore. Extends patents to 115 years!
Re:have to admit... by rubycodez · 2015-04-20 07:26 · Score: 2, Funny

And it's so ambiguous. Is that a patent on old pasta? a macaroni patent that expired? A patent inscribed on a tube of pasta? patent on fancy 18th century duds?