Award Ceremony Speech

Presentation Speech by the former Rector General of National Antiquities H. Hildebrand, President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on December 10, 1909

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Research in physics has provided us with many surprises. Discoveries which at first seemed to have but theoretical interest have often led to inventions of the greatest importance to the advancement of mankind. And if this holds good for physics in general, it is even more true in the case of research in the field of electricity.

The discoveries and inventions for which the Royal Academy of Sciences has decided to award this year's Nobel Prize for Physics, also have their origin in purely theoretical work and study. Important and epoch-making, however, as these were in their particular fields, no one could have guessed at the start that they would lead to the practical applications witnessed later.

While we are, this evening, conferring Nobel's Prize upon two of the men who have contributed most to the development of wireless telegraphy, we must first register our admiration for those great research workers, now dead, who through their brilliant and gifted work in the fields of mathematical and experimental physics, opened up the path to great practical applications. It was Faraday with his unique penetrating power of mind, who first suspected a close connection between the phenomena of light and electricity, and it was Maxwell who transformed his bold concepts and thoughts into mathematical language, and finally, it was Hertz who through his classical experiments showed that the new ideas as to the nature of electricity and light had a real basis in fact. To be sure, it was already well known before Hertz's time, that a capacitor charged with electricity can under certain circumstances discharge itself oscillatorily, that is to say, by electric currents passing to and fro. Hertz, however, was the first to demonstrate that the effects of these currents propagate themselves in space with the velocity of light, thereby producing a wave motion having all the distinguishing characteristics of light. This discovery - perhaps the greatest in the field of physics throughout the last half-century - was made in 1888. It forms the foundation, not only for modern science of electricity, but also for wireless telegraphy. But it was still a great step from laboratory trials in miniature where the electrical waves could be traced over but a small number of metres, to the transmission of signals over great distances. A man was needed who was able to grasp the potentialities of the enterprise and who could overcome all the various difficulties which stood in the way of the practical realization of the idea. The carrying out of this great task was reserved for Guglielmo Marconi. Even when taking into account previous attempts at this work and the fact that the conditions and prerequisites for the feasibility of this enterprise were already given, the honour of the first trials is nevertheless due, by and large, to Marconi, and we must freely acknowledge that the first success was gained as a result of his ability to shape the whole thing into a practical, usable system, added to his inflexible energy with which he pursued his self appointed aim.

Marconi's first experiment to transmit a signal by means of Hertzian waves was carried out in 1895. During the 14 years which have elapsed since then, wireless telegraphy has progressed without pause until it has attained the great importance it possesses today. In 1897 it was still only possible to effect a wireless communication over a distance of 14-20 km. Today, electrical waves are despatched between the Old and the New World, all the larger ocean-going steamers have their own wireless telegraphy equipment on board, and every Navy of significance uses a system of wireless telegraphy. The development of a great invention seldom occurs through one individual man, and many forces have contributed to the remarkable results now achieved. Marconi's original system had its weak points. The electrical oscillations sent out from the transmitting station were relatively weak and consisted of wave-series following each other, of which the amplitude rapidly fell-so-called "damped oscillations". A result of this was that the waves had a very weak effect at the receiving station, with the further result that waves from various other transmitting stations readily interfered, thus acting disturbing at the receiving station. It is due above all to the inspired work of Professor Ferdinand Braun that this unsatisfactory state of affairs was overcome. Braun made a modification in the layout of the circuit for the despatch of electrical waves so that it was possible to produce intense waves with very little damping. It was only through this that the so-called "long-distance telegraphy" became possible, where the oscillations from the transmitting station, as a result of resonance, could exert the maximum possible effect upon the receiving station. The further advantage was obtained that in the main only waves of the frequency used by the transmitting station were effective at the receiving station. It is only through the introduction of these improvements that the magnificent results in the use of wireless telegraphy have been attained in recent times.

Research workers and engineers toil unceasingly on the development of wireless telegraphy. Where this development can lead, we know not. However, with the results already achieved, telegraphy over wires has been extended by this invention in the most fortunate way. Independent of fixed conductor routes and independent of space, we can produce connections between far-distant places, over far-reaching waters and deserts. This is the magnificent practical invention which has flowered upon one of the most brilliant scientific discovery of our time!

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 

Guglielmo Marconi

Born: 25 April 1874, Bologna, Italy

Died: 20 July 1937, Rome, Italy

Affiliation at the time of the award: Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd., London, United Kingdom

Prize motivation: "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"

Field: Electromagnetism, applied electromagnetism

Karl Ferdinand Braun

Born: 6 June 1850, Fulda, Hesse-Kassel (now in Germany)

Died: 20 April 1918, Brooklyn, NY, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Strasbourg University, Strasbourg, Alsace, then Germany

Prize motivation: "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"

Field: Electromagnetism, applied electromagnetism

Biography

Karl Ferdinand Braun was born on June 6, 1850 at Fulda, where he was educated at the local "Gymnasium" (grammar school). He studied at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin and graduated in 1872 with a paper on the oscillations of elastic strings. He worked as assistant to Professor Quincke at Würzburg University and in 1874 accepted a teaching appointment to the St. Thomas Gymnasium in Leipzig. Two years later he was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Marburg, and in 1880 he was invited to fill a similar post at Strasbourg University. Braun was made Professor of Physics at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe in 1883 and was finally invited by the University of Tübingen in 1885; one of his tasks there was to build a new Physics Institute. Ten years later, in 1895, he returned to Strasbourg as Principal of the Physics Institute, where he remained, in spite of an invitation from Leipzig University to succeed G. Wiedemann.

Braun's first investigations were concerned with oscillations of strings and elastic rods, especially with regard to the influence of the amplitude and environment of rods on their oscillations. Other studies were based on thermodynamic principles, such as those on the influence of pressure on the solubility of solids.

His most important works, however, were in the field of electricity. He published papers on deviations from Ohm's law and on the calculations of the electromotive force of reversible galvanic elements from thermal sources. His practical experiments led him to invent what is now called Braun's electrometer, and also a cathode-ray oscillograph, constructed in 1897.

In 1898 he started to occupy himself with wireless telegraphy, by attempting to transmit Morse signals through water by means of high-frequency currents. Subsequently he introduced the closed circuit of oscillation into wireless telegraphy, and was one of the first to send electric waves in definite directions. In 1902 he succeeded in receiving definitely directed messages by means of inclined beam antennae.

Braun's papers on wireless telegraphy were published in 1901 in the form of a brochure under the title Drahtlose Telegraphie durch Wasser und Luff (Wireless telegraphy through water and air).

After the outbreak of the First World War, Braun was summoned to New York to attend as a witness in a lawsuit regarding a patent claim. Owing to his absence from his laboratory and due to illness he was unable to carry out further scientific work. Braun thus spent the last years of his life peacefully in the United States, where he died on April 20, 1918.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

 

Biography

Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman, and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in the County Wexford, Ireland. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. Even as a boy he took a keen interest in physical and electrical science and studied the works of Maxwell, Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others. In 1895 he began laboratory experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio where he succeeded in sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.

In 1896 Marconi took his apparatus to England where he was introduced to Mr. (later Sir) William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the Post Office, and later that year was granted the world's first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. He demonstrated his system successfully in London, on Salisbury Plain and across the Bristol Channel, and in July 1897 formed The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited (in 1900 re-named Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited). In the same year he gave a demonstration to the Italian Government at Spezia where wireless signals were sent over a distance of twelve miles. In 1899 he established wireless communication between France and England across the English Channel. He erected permanent wireless stations at The Needles, Isle of Wight, at Bournemouth and later at the Haven Hotel, Poole, Dorset.

In 1900 he took out his famous patent No. 7777 for "tuned or syntonic telegraphy" and, on an historic day in December 1901, determined to prove that wireless waves were not affected by the curvature of the Earth, he used his system for transmitting the first wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles.

Between 1902 and 1912 he patented several new inventions. In 1902, during a voyage in the American liner "Philadelphia", he first demonstrated "daylight effect" relative to wireless communication and in the same year patented his magnetic detector which then became the standard wireless receiver for many years. In December 1902 he transmitted the first complete messages to Poldhu from stations at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and later Cape Cod, Massachusetts, these early tests culminating in 1907 in the opening of the first transatlantic commercial service between Glace Bay and Clifden, Ireland, after the first shorter-distance public service of wireless telegraphy had been established between Bari in Italy and Avidari in Montenegro. In 1905 he patented his horizontal directional aerial and in 1912 a "timed spark" system for generating continuous waves.

In 1914 he was commissioned in the Italian Army as a Lieutenant being later promoted to Captain, and in 1916 transferred to the Navy in the rank of Commander. He was a member of the Italian Government mission to the United States in 1917 and in 1919 was appointed Italian plenipotentiary delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. He was awarded the Italian Military Medal in 1919 in recognition of his war service.

During his war service in Italy he returned to his investigation of short waves, which he had used in his first experiments. After further tests by his collaborators in England, an intensive series of trials was conducted in 1923 between experimental installations at the Poldhu Station and in Marconi's yacht "Elettra" cruising in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and this led to the establishment of the beam system for long distance communication. Proposals to use this system as a means of Imperial communications were accepted by the British Government and the first beam station, linking England and Canada, was opened in 1926, other stations being added the following year.

In 1931 Marconi began research into the propagation characteristics of still shorter waves, resulting in the opening in 1932 of the world's first microwave radiotelephone link between the Vatican City and the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Two years later at Sestri Levante he demonstrated his microwave radio beacon for ship navigation and in 1935, again in Italy, gave a practical demonstration of the principles of radar, the coming of which he had first foretold in a lecture to the American Institute of Radio Engineers in New York in 1922.

He has been the recipient of honorary doctorates of several universities and many other international honours and awards, among them the Nobel Prize for Physics, which in 1909 he shared with Professor Karl Braun, the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, the John Fritz Medal and the Kelvin Medal. He was decorated by the Tsar of Russia with the Order of St. Anne, the King of Italy created him Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus, and awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1902. Marconi also received the freedom of the City of Rome (1903), and was created Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy in 1905. Many other distinctions of this kind followed. In 1914 he was both created a Senatore in the Italian Senate and app ointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in England. He received the hereditary title of Marchese in 1929.

In 1905 he married the Hon. Beatrice O'Brien, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin, the marriage being annulled in 1927, in which year he married the Countess Bezzi-Scali of Rome. He had one son and two daughters by his first and one daughter by his second wife. His recreations were hunting, cycling and motoring.

Marconi died in Rome on July 20, 1937.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

資料來源:http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1909/

資料來源:http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Karl_Ferdinand_Braun/1