- Julio Cervera Baviera
Infobox Celebrity
name = "Julio Cervera Baviera"
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1854|1|26|mf=y
birth_place =Segorbe ,Spain
death_date = ~1929
death_place = possiblyMadrid ,Spain
occupation =Inventor , military commander, andengineer
salary =
networth =
spouse =
website =
footnotes =Julio Cervera Baviera (
January 26 ,1854 —ca. 1929) was a Spanishengineer , pioneer in the development ofradio , educator, explorer, and military man. He also authored various scientific and geographic books and articles.Education
Born in
Segorbe , he studied Physical and Natural Sciences at theUniversity of Valencia but abandoned these studies to join the Army. He first graduated from the Academy ofCavalry (1875) and then from the Academy of Military Engineers at Guadalajara (1882).Work in Africa
He traveled to Morocco in 1877 and published a book called "Geografía militar de Marruecos" in 1884, and the Army commissioned him in 1884 to explore this area once more. He published "Expedicion geografico-militar al interior y costas de Marruecos" (1885).
At the beginning of 1886, Cervera was working in the
photoengraving industry inBarcelona .http://www.sge.org/sge03/conferencias.asp] However, in the summer of 1886, under the sponsorship of the Spanish Society of Commercial Geography ("Sociedad Española de Geografía Comercial"), Cervera, theArabic interpreterFelipe Rizzo (1823-1908), and biologist and meteorologistFrancisco Quiroga Rodríguez (1853-1894) traversed the Spanish colony ofRio de Oro , part ofSpanish Sahara , where they madetopographical and astronomical observations in a land whose features were barely known at the time to geographers. They traversed the area betweenCape Blanc andCape Bojador , reaching Adrar after a journey of 900 km. [Société de géographiede Lille, "Bulletin de la Société de géographie de Lille" (Lille: Siege de la Société, 1887), 477.] It is considered the first scientific expedition in that part of theSahara . They also signed the treaties of Idjil (near Atar) with the emir of Adrar andSaharawi chiefs. [Anthony G. Pazzanita, Tony Hodges, "Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara" (Scarecrow Press, 1994), 330.]In 1884, Cervera supervised the construction of a series of
blockhouses aroundMelilla . [Société de géographie, Bulletin de la Société de géographie (France: Société de géographie, 1893), ser.7 v.14, 217.] Between 1888 and 1890, he served asMilitary attaché in theEmbassy of Spain inTangiers .Imprisonment
Cervera's work in Spanish Africa earned him the promotion of
commander . However, on December 19, 1890 he published a criticism of the Spanish colonial government in Morocco in "El Imparcial", and he was arrested after being tried, and incarcerated in the Santa Bárbara atAlicante in 1891. He was released two years later.After 1894, he served as
aide-de-camp to GeneralManuel Macías y Casado in the latter’s assignments as Commander General of Melilla; Captain General of theCanary Islands ; Commander-in-Chief of the Seventh Corp of the Army at Valladolid; and Captain General of Puerto Rico.http://www.coit.es/foro/pub/ficheros/librosapendice_1_981ff066.pdf?PHPSESSID=c3606fd8d59137417f50e69e7d8f8566]panish-American War
During the
Spanish-American War , he was in charge of defense ofGuamaní , a peak that commanded the road betweenCayey andGuayama . He was thus involved in theBattle of Guamaní (August 9, 1898), and was responsible for repulsing an attack by American troops there.After the war, he gained notoriety as the author of a
pamphlet called "La defensa dePuerto Rico ", which supportedGovernor General Manuel Macías y Casado, who had become head of the government of Puerto Rico under the Autonomous Charter created in February 1898 (Puerto Rico soon passed under American control). Its purpose was to support the actions of General Macias before the Spanish public but it ended up criticizing the Puerto Rican volunteers in the Spanish Army. After Spain's defeat against the UnitedStates , Spaniards looked for reasons to explain it. Cervera wrote: "I have never seen such a servile, ungrateful country [i.e. Puerto Rico] ... In twenty-four hours, the people of Puerto Rico went from being fervently Spanish to enthusiastically American... They humiliated themselves, giving in to the invader as the slave bows to the powerful lord." [Frances Negrón-Muntaner, "Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture" (New York: NYU Press, 2004), 11.]A group of angry young "sanjuaneros" agreed to challenge Cervera to a
duel if the commander did not retract his pamphlet. [http://home.coqui.net/sarrasin/pers2.htm Pers2.htm ] ] The young men drew lots for this honor; it fell to José Janer y Soler (his “seconds” - in Spanish, "padrinos"- were Cayetano Coll y Toste y Leonidas Villalón). Cervera’s seconds were Colonel Pedro del Pino and Captain Emilio Barrera. The duel never took place, as Cervera explained his intentions in writing the pamphlet, and all parties were satisfied.Radio Pioneering
In May-June 1899, Cervera had, with the blessing of the Spanish Army, visited Marconi’s radiotelegraphic installations on the English Channel, and worked to develop his own system. He began collaborating with
Guglielmo Marconi on resolving the problem of a wireless communication system, obtaining somepatents by the end of 1899. Research by professor Ángel Faus credits Baviera with inventing theradio in 1902 and patenting it inEngland ,Germany ,Belgium , and Spain. [http://www.unav.es/english/news/38.html News, Latest news, The Spaniard Julio Cervera Baviera, and not Marconi, was the inventor of the radio, according to professor Ángel Faus . University of Navarra ] ] "The inventor of radio was not Marconi, norJohn Ambrose Fleming , norLee de Forest , Fessenden orDavid Sarnoff , but rather the Spaniard Julio Cervera Baviera," Faus asserts. Marconi invented the wireless telegraph, demonstrating its effectiveness in December 1901, but did not produce radios until 1913. Faus points out that Cervera, who worked with Marconi and his assistantGeorge Kemp in 1899, resolved the difficulties of wireless telegraph and obtained his first patents prior to the end of that year.On March 22, 1902, Cervera founded the Spanish Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Corporation in the presence of the
Madrid notary Antonio Turón y Boscá. Cervera brought to the Spanish Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Corporation the patents he had obtained in Spain, Belgium, Germany and England. He established the second and third regular radiotelegraph service in the history of the world in 1901 and 1902 by maintaining regular transmissions betweenTarifa andCeuta for three consecutive months, and betweenJavea (Cabo de la Nao ) andIbiza (Cabo Pelado ). This is after Marconi established the radiotelegraphic service between theIsle of Wight andBournemouth in 1898.In 1906, Domenico Mazzotto wrote: "In Spain the
Minister of War has applied the system perfected by the commander of military engineering, Julio Cervera Baviera (English patent No. 20084 (1899))." [Domenico Mazzotto, "Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony". Translated by Selimo Romeo Bottone (Whittaker & Co., 1906), 217.]Cervera thus achieved some success in this field, but his radiotelegraphic activities ceased suddenly, the reasons for which are unclear to this day.
Other activities
He also worked as a technical instructor, after being appointed on August 27, 1900 royal commissary at the Escuela Superior de Artes e Industrias de Madrid. After 8 months, he became frustrated with his inability to reform the curriculum and traveled to Europe and the United States from May 1903, where he became interested in instruction via correspondence. He abandoned his military career, and set up the Internacional Institución Electrotécnica, in Valencia in 1903, one of the first
long-distance education programs in the world. It gave degrees for the careers of mechanical engineer, electrician, and mechanic-electrician.He published his "Enciclopedia científico-practica del ingeniero mecánico electricista", published in 2 editions (1904, 1915). The institution also published a magazine called "Electricidad y Mecánica". The institution later renamed itself the Institución de Enseñaza Técnica, and offered two new degrees: agricultural engineering and therapeutic teacher. It also offered a long-distance language learning program by
phonograph .Cervera was also responsible for designing the original
Tenerife Tram system. He helped build a tramway system in his native Segorbe.Personal life and political life
Cervera was a liberal republican. He was also a militant Freemason who founded a
masonic lodge in Segorbe. In 1890, he founded, withFelipe de Borbón y Braganza , an order of Masons inMorocco , comprising 12 lodges and 200 masons (the members wereAfricans , Europeans, Americans). A year later it was integrated with the Spanish G.O. (Gran Oriente). [http://rayuela.uc3m.es/~nogales/MAS/MAStext07.html]Cervera was friends with the republican politician
Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla . His political views caused him trouble with his superiors and may have been the reason behind some of his failures. In 1891, he ran as Republican candidate to theCortes for Segorbe, but themilitary coup prevented him from running or achieving victory. He tried again in 1893 and was about to act as deputy, when electoral rigging prevented this from happening. In 1908, he obtained a seat in the partial elections as candidate of the "Partido Republicano Radical" for Valencia, but did not win again in 1914, when he representedXàtiva .He had married María de los Desamparados Giménez in 1883. They had two girls, Amparo and Pilar, and a boy, who died as a child. With Amparo he spent his last years in Madrid, where he died around 1929.
Notes
External links
*es icon [http://www.coit.es/foro/pub/ficheros/librosapendice_1_981ff066.pdf?PHPSESSID=c3606fd8d59137417f50e69e7d8f8566 PDF] (1.79 MB Download)
*es icon [http://www.unav.es/noticias/211005-06.html El español Julio Cervera Baviera, y no Marconi, fue quien inventó la radio, según el profesor Ángel Faus]
*es icon [http://telva.elmundo.es/suplementos/cronica/2005/524/1130623206.html EL ESPAÑOL QUE INVENTO LA RADIO]
*es icon [http://www.periodistadigital.com/periodismo/object.php?o=207507 Elena de Regoyos «La radio nació en Ceuta y no la inventó Marconi»]
*es icon [http://home.coqui.net/sarrasin/pers2.htm Protagonistas de la Guerra Hispano Americana en Puerto Rico]
*es icon [http://www.sge.org/sge03/conferencias.asp Expedición "Río de Oro" al Sáhara Occidental]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.