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[SCIENCE AND MEDICINE] - “MARCONI TO MURRAY: THE SECRETS BEHIND THE BIRTH OF RADIO” - MARCONI Guglielmo - Autograph draft of a letter signed “G. Marconi”, not dated (1889 ca.) by the Italian electrical engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system. This led to Marconi being credited as the inventor of radio and sharing the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ferdinand Braun ”in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy”. Marconi was also an entrepreneur and businessman who founded the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company (which became the Marconi Company) in the United Kingdom in 1897. Marconi writes to the Scottish engineer James Erskine Murray (1868 - 1927), concerning vertical reflector experiments. He proposes to carry out at the Haven Hotel wireless station. In the draft, Marconi provides a rough sketch of his new design fo “good tubes”, which he hopes to have made and tested with signals from Alum Bay: “…As you see the upper plug will have a small prominence which will dip into the filim[en]t. When using such a tube it will of course be necessary to have more thention [sic] on the tapper spring…as we won’t have any help from gravity in springing the hammer back…”. Murray, formerly Assistant Professor of Physics at Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh, was Marconi’s principal experimental assistant from November 1898 until his resignation in 1900. He worked at the station of Haven, Poole, until transferring to the Marcony factory at the Chelmsford in July 1899. 5 pp. On two sheets. (12 x 20 cm ca.).