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Books Authored by Tim Wander

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi, (25th April 1874 – 20th July 1937) was an Italian inventor, electrical engineer and pioneer of wireless communication. He is often credited as the 'inventor of radio', but the story is far more complex than this. In 1909 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun 'in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy'. He was an entrepreneur, businessman and founder in Britain in 1897 of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company (which eventually became the Marconi Company). After five years of intensive struggle his Company went from strength to strength defining, designing and building the modern world of electronics, broadcasting and communications as we know it today.

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Marconi Books

Tim has written and edited many other books, including "Marconi on the Isle of Wight", produced for the centenary of the closure of the Alum Bay, Royal Needles Hotel station in 2000. A long held interest in early radio sets inherited from his father and a passion for the early days of radio broadcasting led him to write "2MT Writtle - The Birth of British Broadcasting", first published in 1988. After 22 years the second, completely rewritten and much larger edition was published in October 2010. In 2012 he published the story of the world’s first purpose built wireless factory – "Marconi’s New Street Works 1912-2012. Birthplace of the Wireless Age." In 2013 he also published the completely rewritten story of "Marconi on the Isle of Wight", telling the full story of Marconi’s earliest stations and experiments.

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Announcing a major new book

From Marconi to Melba

The Centenary of the First British Radio Broadcasts
by Tim Wander

2020 marks the centenary of British radio broadcasting, which forms an integral part of Chelmsford 2020 – a Year of Science and Creativity.

This new book tells the story of Marconi’s early work, the historic Chelmsford broadcasts during 1920, Writtle station 2MT in 1922, and then the extraordinary growth of the BBC.

Over 280 pages in a new all colour A4 format, with many images never seen before or colourised to bring new life to these amazing stories.

Limited to just 500 copies. Each one will be hand signed and numbered by the author.


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Guglielmo Marconi - Building the Wireless Age

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This is the detailed story of Marconi's intense, five year struggle to develop a reliable and practical wireless communication system. It was a constant search for distance and reliability, often in the face of appalling weather. Step by step he overcame countless technical difficulties, battling seemingly insurmountable problems of physics and engineering as his embryonic system began to take shape.

It was also a battle for public, press, commercial, military and scientific acceptance. It quickly became a war of money and ideas as Marconi fought against international and state sponsored competitors who deployed every form of industrial espionage and legal challenge. Each was determined to claim a piece of the new science and try to take control of what was becoming a new industrial revolution.

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