Genio e contesto: le lunghe radici della telegrafia senza filo nella fisica elettrica del Settecento a Bologna

This article aims at stimulating a reflection on the relationship between genius – here represented by the inventor of wireless telegraphy, Guglielmo Marconi – and the context of the study of electrical physics in Bologna, with which Marconi came into contact during the initial phases of his experimentation. By revisiting the lectures given by Augusto Righi at the University of Bologna in the late nineteenth century and some experiments conducted by Luigi Galvani at the Institute of Sciences in the late eighteenth century, surprising similarities with the early Marconi experiments are highlighted. The purpose is to reconstruct one of the experimental contexts to which Marconi, albeit partially, turned for the development of his invention. The analysis proposed here also shows how the same experiments, over the course of two centuries, were interpreted within different theoretical frameworks: life sciences and animal electricity, electromagnetism, and wireless communications.