MOVIE THE BUCKET LIST AND MARCONI, INVENTOR OF RADIO

MOVIE THE BUCKET LIST AND MARCONI, INVENTOR OF RADIO

The Bucket List is a movie directed by Rob Reiner and staring Moran Freeman and Jack Nicholson. The plot involves two terminally ill men who fulfill a list of things they want to do before they die. ("Bucket list" things to do before kicking the bucket) I’m Marconi hardly objective about the great acting of Morgan Freeman and have seen few, if any, movies of Jack Nicholson that I haven’t enjoyed. Both are superb actors. While there are those who will ridicule the plot, I found it heart warming and moving.

But, I write about the film because of something the character played by Freeman says. Freeman’s character is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge and at one point says that Marconi is not entitled to all the credit given him over the invention of the radio. In checking on this, I learned that Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937) received the U.S. patent on the radio as well as having been awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. However, as suggested in the movie, in 1943 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned most of Marconi’s patents in light of the previous work of Nikola Tesla, Oliver Lodge and John Stone from which Marconi’s patent’s were based. So, the movie was correct. Marconi is given credit he does not deserve for the sole inventor of radio.

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