Pope Pius XI at the newly-created Vatican Radio
By Michele Raviart & Devin Watkins
Apr 25 2024
Ahead of International Marconi Day and 150 years since his birth, we recall the rich legacy of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor-entrepreneur who set up Vatican Radio in 1931 and installed a ‘big cell phone’ in Pope Pius XI’s car that connected to the Vatican.
Guglielmo Marconi was born at the Marescalchi Palace in Bologna on Apr 25, 1874.
His father, Giuseppe, was a landowner from Italy’s Emilia province, and his mother, Annie Jameson, had come to Italy to study “bel canto” singing. She was Irish, a UK citizen, and the granddaughter of the founder of the famous Jameson whiskey distillery.
Among his many experiments, Marconi invented the first radio that could broadcast beyond line-of-sight in 1895.
After receiving the first patent for his “wireless telegraph” in England, Marconi established the London-based “Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company,” later the Marconi Company.
Two years later, he opened a branch in the United States, which was later sold to General Electric and became RCA. By the end of his life, Marconi held 70 patents.
Nobel prize for life-saving invention
He received the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with the German scientist Karl Ferdinand Braun, for the “contribution to the development of wireless telegraphy.” He accepted it in December 1909 in Stockholm, at 35 years old.
His radio technology became mandatory on all ships across the globe after Mayday radio calls helped save over 720 people in the tragic sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
In 1922, Marconi inaugurated a new radio station in London out of which, by order of the British government, the BBC was born.
Then, on Feb 12, 1931, Pope Pius XI became the first Pope to address the world via radio, saying, in Latin: “In arcano dei consilium, succidimus in loco principis apostolorum.”
At the Pope’s request, Marconi had personally set up Vatican Radio, which in 2015 was incorporated into the newly-created Dicastery for Communication and lives on as the radio broadcaster of the Holy See.
Marconi’s ‘big cell phone’ for the Pope
Among his other inventions, Marconi created a “big mobile phone” that connected Pope Pius XI’s car with the Vatican and the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.
Many years later, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, told participants at a conference in the United States, “Marconi is our roots. We are the branches.”
After him, Sir Martin Cooper, who invented the hand-held mobile phone as we know it today, said, “Actually, my invention, the small mobile phone, descends from Marconi’s intuition and from Marconi’s big cell phone.”
Radios fell silent at his death
On Jul 20, 1937, Guglielmo Marconi died in Rome from one of his frequent heart attacks.
Radios around the world, increasingly present in public spaces and in people’s homes, simultaneously interrupted their broadcasts for two whole minutes. – Vatican News
