The National Research Council (Cnr) and RAI – Italian Radio and Television celebrated today the 150th anniversary of the birth of Guglielmo Marconi and the 100th anniversary of the birth of radio in Italy with the event “Marconi on the path of science. The great journey of research and innovation”, held in Rome, at the organisation’s headquarters, in the presence of numerous scholars and representatives of the institutional world.
The event, moderated and hosted by Umberto Broccoli, wanted to remember the figure and scientific contribution of Marconi – inventor, entrepreneur, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909, as well as president of the Cnr from 1927 to 1937 – illustrating his intuitions and experiments which often favored new avenues of research.
At the beginning, the President of the Cnr Maria Chiara Carrozza recalled the value of Guglielmo Marconi’s scientific innovations: “In the first years of his presidency, the organization achieved important results: Marconi had a clear vision of the importance that scientific research could have played a role in the development of Italy and on the world stage, seeing the potential of one technology at the service of man and the development of mass communications as a tool for bring people closer and the peoples among them”.
The President of RAI also brought the inaugural greetings Marinella Soldi with a greeting message: “Celebrating Marconi today acquires an even more significant importance also thanks to the indissoluble bond with the radio, our radio, which this year celebrates one hundred years since the first broadcast. It would be difficult to think of the modern world without Marconi’s inventions: his research and experiments gave rise to all future means and systems of remote communication”. Also present were the nephew of the scholar and teacher of the Meier People’s University Guglielmo Giovanelli Marconi and the President of the Guglielmo Marconi Foundation and “Marconi 150” National Committee Giulia Fortunato; while the Minister of Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso sent a video message of greeting.
The event continued with the screening of the film “13 June 1934. Marconi experiments with the future”referring to research on radar which Marconi undertook on this very day – 13 June 90 years ago – on board the ship Elettra; then with a series of scientific and informative interventions aimed at exploring the scholar’s great scientific legacy.
The life and historical context in which the scholar worked were recalled by Silvia Caianiello, researcher at the Institute for the history of modern philosophical and scientific thought of the National Research Council (Cnr-Ispf); while Valentina Raimondi, of the “Nello Carrara” Institute of Applied Physics (Cnr-Ifac), and Francesco Soldovieri, of the Institute for the electromagnetic detection of the environment (Cnr-Irea), explored the use of radar, focusing respectively on on the multiple uses in modern life and in particular in support of scientific explorations.
In an ideal handover between the past and present of scientific research, a connection was activated with researchers on board the CNR oceanographic vessel “Gaia Blu”, currently engaged in a series of summer oceanographic campaigns in the Italian seas.
Francesco Cataliotti and Alessandro Zavatta of the National Institute of Optics of the National Research Council (Cnr-Ino) have created a demonstration of quantum communication using an advanced cryptography technology developed to guarantee the absolute security of telecommunications, of which Marconi was the pioneer . In particular, they “united” the CNR headquarters where the event was taking place and the Rome CNR research area “Tor Vergata” via videoconferencing, via Telsy’s proprietary web conference platform, TelsyAntares, using the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), a technology that, exploiting the laws of quantum mechanics, allows you to generate and distribute cryptographic keys between two or more users in a totally safe way from cyber attacks. A demonstration resulting from the collaboration between QTI – Quantum Telecommunications Italy (spin-off of the Cnr-Ino and first Italian company of Quantum Key Distribution) and Telsy – a TIM Group company active for over fifty years in the sector of communications security and cybersecurity over which is itself a member of QTI – which has concretely shown how this technology can be effectively used to establish intrinsically secure communication networks.
The director of RAI “Canon, artistic heritage and institutional agreements” Roberto Ferrara presented the exhibition “Guglielmo Marconi. Transmission tests”, inaugurated last April 25th in the RAI headquarters in Via Asiago 6 (Rome), and born from a project by Ennio Matano. Open to the public until 13 February 2025, the exhibition offers a reconstruction of the experiment cabin on board the Elettra, where the applications of short and very short Hertzian waves were carried out which gave rapid impetus to the progress of radio communications. These objects, coming both from the RAI heritage and on loan from the Historical Communication Museum of the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, together with books, films and other materials represent, even today, a living testimony to the evolution of global communication.
The keynote speech “The role of the mass media in scientific diplomacy” was entrusted to Umberto Vattani, President of the Venice International University (VIU); while, in conclusion, the film dedicated to “Marconi’s Scientific Testament” was screened, created by the RAI Digital and Transmedia Contents Department.
The figure of Guglielmo Marconi is also remembered in the web magazine of the Cnr press office “Almanacco della Scienza Cnr”, online from today at https://almanacco.cnr.it/, with contributions from researchers from the institution on life and the innovations he created.