Alfonso Marconi (18651936) was an Italian businessman and collector of stringed instruments, most famous for assisting his younger brother Guglielmo Marconi in his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission.[1]
Alfonso Marconi was born into the Italian nobility in 1865, the first son of Giuseppe Marconi (an Italian aristocratic landowner from Porretta Terme) and of his Irish/Scots wife, Annie Jameson (daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in County Wexford, Ireland, and granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons).[2] Alfonso was educated at Bedford School in England between 1876 and 1880, during his peripatetic childhood.[3]
Alfonso Marconi assisted his younger brother Guglielmo Marconi with his early experiments, and in the summer of 1895 Guglielmo moved his experimentation outdoors.[4] After increasing the length of transmitter and receiver antennas, arranging them vertically, and positioning an antenna so that it touched the ground, Guglielmo significantly increased the range he could achieve.[5]
Alfonso stood on one side of a hill near to the family home of Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy, and fired a shot which was transmitted over the hill to Guglielmo: a distance of approximately 2.4km (01.5miles). Guglielmo concluded that, with additional funding and research, a device could become capable of spanning greater distances and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily.[6]
Alfonso Marconi was a director of the American International Marine Communication Company and an avid collector of stringed instruments.[7] [8]
He died suddenly at a London hotel on the evening of Friday 24 April 1936 following a heart attack (his brother died following a heart attack in 1937)[9] and is buried with his mother on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.