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Signor Marconi’s Magic Box: The invention that sparked the radio revolution

By (author) Gavin Weightman

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normal price: R 310.95

Price: R 279.95


| book description |

The intriguing story of how wireless was invented by Guglielmo Marconi – and how it amused Queen Victoria, saved the lives of the Titanic survivors, tracked down criminals and began the radio revolution. Wireless was the most fabulous invention of the 19th century: the public thought it was magic, the popular newspapers regarded it as miraculous, and the leading scientists of the day (in Europe and America) could not understand how it worked. In 1897, when the first wireless station was established by Marconi in a few rooms of the Royal Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight, nobody knew how far these invisible waves could travel through the ‘ether’, carrying Morse Coded messages decipherable at a receiving station. (The definitive answer was not discovered till the 1920s, by which time radio had become a sophisticated industry filling the airwaves with a cacaphony of sounds – most of it American.) Marconi himself was the son of an Italian father and an Irish mother (from the Jameson whiskey family); he grew up in Italy and was fluent in Italian and English, but it was in England that his invention first caught on. Marconi was in his early twenties at the time (he died in 1937). With the ‘new telegraphy’ came the real prospect of replacing the network of telegraphic cables that criss-crossed land and sea at colossal expense. Initially it was the great ships that benefited from the new invention – including the Titanic, whose survivors owed their lives to the wireless.

| product details |



Normally shipped | Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock
Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers
Published date | 15 Mar 2004
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 336
Dimensions | 198 x 129 x 22mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 258g
ISBN | 978-0-0071-3006-1
Readership Age |
BISAC | biography & autobiography / science & technology


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Normally shipped | Available from overseas. Usually dispatched in 14 days
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 386.95
Price | R 347.95 | on special |



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