Marconi Company

The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company (sometimes presented as Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Company). It was renamed Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in 1900 and The Marconi Company in 1963.

As the defence division of GEC since 1968 it was renamed GEC-Marconi in 1987, Marconi Electronic Systems (MES) in 1998, which merged with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems in 1999. The Marconi Company should not be confused with the Marconi Corporation which was created in 1999 by the renaming of The General Electric Company (GEC), minus the Marconi Electronic Systems business.

History

Early history

An employee of the Marconi Company, England, 1906

Marconi Wireless Station in Somerset, New Jersey in 1921.

Marconi's "Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company" was formed on 20 July 1897 after the granting of a British patent for wireless in March of that year. The Company opened the world's first radio factory on Hall Street in Chelmsford in 1898 and was responsible for some of the most important advances in radio and television. These include:

• The Diode vacuum tube in 1904 (Fleming)
• Transatlantic radio broadcasting
• High Frequency tuned broadcasting
• Formation of the British Broadcasting Company (later to become the independent BBC)
• Formation of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (assets acquired by RCA in 1920)
• Formation of Marconi Marine (1904)
• Short wave beam broadcasting
• Radar
• Television
• Avionics

Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Training College was set up in 1901. Along with private entrepreneurs, Marconi company formed in 1924 the Unione Radiofonica Italiana (URI), which was granted by Mussolini's regime a monopoly of radio broadcasts in 1924. After the war, URI became the RAI, which lives on to this day.

In 1939 the Marconi Research Laboratories at Great Baddow were founded and in 1941 there was a buy out of Marconi-Ekco Instruments to form Marconi Instruments.

Operations as English Electric subsidiary

English Electric acquired The Marconi Company in 1946 which complemented its other operations; heavy electrical engineering, aircraft and its railway traction business. In 1948 the company was reorganised into four divisions:

• Communications
• Broadcasting
• Aeronautics
• Radar

These had expanded to 13 manufacturing divisions by 1965 when a further reorganisation took place. The divisions were placed into three groups :

• Telecommunications
• Electronics
• Components

At this time The Marconi Company had facilities at New Street Chelmsford, Baddow, Basildon, Billericay, and Writtle as well as in Wembley, Gateshead and Hackbridge. It also owned Marconi Instruments, Sanders Electronics, Eddystone Radio and Marconi Italiana (based in Genoa, Italy). In 1967 Marconi took over Stratton and Company to form Eddystone Radio.

Expansion as GEC subsidiary

In 1967 or 1968 English Electric was subject to a takeover bid by the Plessey Company but chose instead to accept an offer from GEC. The computer section of GEC, English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM), merged with Elliott Automation and International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) to form Marconi Elliott Computer Systems Limited (later renamed GEC Computers Limited) and International Computers Limited (ICL). In 1968 Marconi Space and Defence Systems and Marconi Underwater Systems were formed.

The Marconi Company continued as the primary defence subsidiary of GEC, GEC-Marconi. Marconi was renamed GEC-Marconi in 1987. During the period 1968-1999 GEC-Marconi/MES underwent massive expansion.

Acquisitions which were folded into the company and partnerships established include:

• Defence operations of Associated Electrical Industries in 1968, AEI had been acquired in 1967.
• Ferranti defence businesses in 1990
• Ferranti Dynamics in 1992
• Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering in 1995
• Alenia Marconi Systems in 1998, a defence electronics company and an equal shares joint venture between GEC-Marconi and Finmeccanica's Alenia Difesa.
• Tracor in 1998.

Other acquisitions include:

• Divisions of Plessey in 1989 (others acquired by its partner in the deal, Siemens AG, to meet with regulatory approval).
  • Plessey Avionics
  • Plessey Naval Systems
  • Plessey Cryptography
  • Plessey Electronic Systems (75%)
  • Sippican
  • Leigh Instruments

In a major reorganisation of the company, GEC-Marconi was renamed Marconi Electronic Systems in 1996 and was separated from other non-defence assets.

Marconi name today

In 1999 GEC underwent a major transformation. Marconi Electronic Systems which included its wireless assets was demerged and sold to British Aerospace which then formed BAE Systems.

GEC, realigning itself as a primarily telecommunications company following the MES sale, retained the Marconi brand and renamed itself Marconi plc. BAE were granted limited rights to continue its use in existing partnerships, however by 2005 no BAE businesses use the Marconi name. Major spending and the dot-com collapse led to a major restructuring of that group, in a debt-for-equity swap shareholders were given 0.5% of the new company, Marconi Corporation plc.

In 1999 Reltec and Fore Systems were acquired at the height of the "dot-com" boom. With its subsequent collapse the Marconi Corporation got into financial difficulties.

In October 2005 the Marconi name and most of the assets were proposed to be bought by the Swedish firm Ericsson. The transaction was completed on January 23, 2006 effective as per January 1, 2006. The Marconi name will still be used as brand within Ericsson. At the time of the acquisition Ericsson announced that they would be rebranding Marconi assets Ericsson and retaining Marconi only as the name of the Italian research facility. However the company has since labeled its OMS line and its Long Haul Digital Radio system Marconi. The rest of the Marconi company was renamed as telent plc.

See also

• Aerospace industry in the United Kingdom
• Marconi Scientists - Article about the 25+ defence employees who have died in mysterious circumstances since the early 1980s.
• Marconiphone - the company's domestic receiver brand.
• Imperial Wireless Chain

References

• Baker, W. J. (1970, 1996) History of the Marconi Company 1894-1965.

External links

• http://www.telent.com
• History of Marconi House
• Ericsson press release about the acquisition completion
• Marconi Calling The Life, Science and Achievements of Guglielmo Marconi
• Catalogue of the Marconi Archives At the Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
• http://homepages.tesco.net/~martin.batesuk/marconi/marconi.htm Detail breakdown of the Companies formation