Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention Of The 19th Century & The Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked A Revolution

A well-researched and well-written biography of Marconi, with a good selection of contemporary photographs which allow the reader to appreciate how different radio technology was in its early days.

Marconi's life, and the world in which he lived and which affected and directed his work, is described in detail, as are the efforts of others who contributed - or claimed to contribute - to the development of radio.

The part that I found frustrating was the lack of technical detail, despite the fact that it is alluded to frequently. It becomes clear that Marconi - and many others in radio's early days - simply did not understand many basic ideas of how radio worked. The problems of tuning are frequently mentioned. But I would have appreciated show more knowing more, from a contemporary perspective, about what they were actually doing, and why (for instance) a magnetic coherer was superior to the device which preceded it.

That frustration aside, this book does an excellent job both of telling Marconi's story, warts and all, and reminding us what the world was like before radio, and the changes radio made possible. show less

OK biography of inventor who promoted wireless and used it without scientifically knowing how it really worked. Best part is how it was used on the Titanic before it sank. Worth reading but there may be better biographies out there.

An interesting biography of Guglielmo Marconi and his role in the invention of radio. While Marconi was not the first person to transmit radio signals, and while he didn't invent the building blocks that made up radio, he was the first person able to take what was a laboratory curiosity and to turn it into a practical system for long-distance communication. It was thanks to Marconi that wireless went from sending signals a few hundred yards to spanning the Atlantic ocean in less than a decade, and so he is, more than anyone, responsible for the birth of radio. This book is an interesting account of this achievement.