# Marconi’s transatlantic signal captures the wireless market Tesla had sold to Morgan

Date: 1901

## The fact

On 12 December 1901 Guglielmo Marconi reported receiving a transatlantic wireless signal in Newfoundland. Investors treated the race [Tesla](/people/nikola-tesla) had sold to Morgan as over. Tesla’s 645,576 patent remained on file; commercial radio did not pay him as the system owner in his lifetime.

## Context

Lodge, Popov, Stone and others share the radio file. The 1943 Supreme Court decision is a later Fact.

Nikola Tesla is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Smithsonian’s Wardenclyffe essay independently dates Marconi’s 1901 signal as the market event that stranded the tower. Tesla’s 1900 patent is the official prior instrument.

Official or archival record: U.S. Patent 645,576 — System of Transmission of Electrical Energy (1900) (https://patents.google.com/patent/US645576A; United States Patent and Trademark Office / Google Patents).

## Significance

Communications-platform path. High confidence on the 1901 demonstration and Tesla’s lifetime commercial defeat.

A market loss is not a later Court myth. Split 1901 and 1943.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Marconi’s 1901 transatlantic claim and Tesla’s failure to own the resulting wireless market. Not established: that Tesla uniquely invented radio, or that every later mobile network is this December night.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Nikola Tesla: https://factrail.ai/people/nikola-tesla

## Drivers

- Antitrust Pressure in Digital Markets: https://factrail.ai/drivers/antitrust-pressure-in-digital-markets

## Sources

- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikola-tesla-tower-that-became-million-dollar-folly-11074324/
- https://patents.google.com/patent/US645576A

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-marconi-transatlantic-1901