Guglielmo Marconi: Some New Documents Covering the Years 1894–1896 [Historical Corner]

There has been a discussion in the pages of this Magazine concerning the possibility that Guglielmo Marconi performed some experiments in Salvan, Switzerland, in the summer of 1895 [1-7]. In September 2008, the International Union of Telecommunications (IUT) in Geneva, an agency of the United Nations (UN), bestowed on Salvan the title of “Telecommunication Heritage Site.” There was a ceremony where both the President of the Swiss Federation, Pascal Couchepin, and the IUT General Secretary, Hamadoun Touré, were present. It is important to highlight that when this occurred, there was a choir of protests that came from Italy, in all the media (see, for example, Figure 1 and [8]). In the end, the Italian Ambassador in Berna, Switzerland, did not show up in Salvan for the ceremony. A deep investigation to clarify this issue was then started directly by the Italian government and the Italian Guglielmo Marconi Foundation, located in Villa Griffone, Sasso Marconi, Bologna, which was recently bestowed an IEEE Milestone by the IEEE President [9, 10]. This paper presents several documents, some of which were gathered during the above-mentioned research. These documents were kept in the Historical Archives of the Waldesian Church (Torre Pellice, Turin, Italy); in the Lincei Acad emy Archives (Rome, Italy); in the Archives of the City of SassoMarconi (Bologna, Italy); and in the State Archives in the City of Bologna. These documents might be of interest to the readers of this Magazine who have followed the debate in [1-7]. Indeed, some of the documents presented here were published for the first time in [11] (Figure 2). This was a very recent publication, dedicated to the 100 years since Guglielmo Marconi´s Noble Prize, published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.