536. Who invented the radio?

When we were growing up, we were taught of a major scientific racism, or maybe oversight, regarding Jagdish Chandra Bose, the Bangali scientist from Calcutta, who invented the radio by demonstrating wireless communication in 1894, 3 years before Guilielmo Marconi did the same in England.

Bose did not patent his idea, but Marconi did, so the credit to radio, not to mention, the profits, went to Marconi rather than Bose. Wikipedia (I think incorrectly) states that Bose wasn't interested in patenting his technology. I can't imagine though how a Bangali scientist would be able to file a patent in a different country if he wasn't exposed to it. We're talking 1895, and up until 10 years ago, it was every bit difficult to even find information on the patents submitted and under consideration. He finally got his first US patent in 1904.

So, I was reading about another inventor who is prominently featured on the movie, the Prestige, starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, about magicians competing for fame and attention by outdoing each other's work. There's a scene where Jackman travels to the US to meet this brilliant inventor, Nikola Tesla, who creates an electrical grid for his magic show.

I thought at the time that it was a fictitious character. I found out recently that Nikola Tesla, in fact did exist, and was a brilliant scientist and, get this - in 1895, he also demonstrated wireless communication in the US.

One last interesting tidbit about Tesla and Marconi - Tesla became a mad man in his later years, and became more and more interested in racial selection, or eugenics. And Marconi became an active Italian Fascist.

And Jagdish continued to contribute to other branches of science, particularly plant science, in his later years.