MURGAŠ, Jozef
* 17. 12. 1864, Jabríková, Slovakia
† 11. 5. 1929, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., USA
Inventor (wireless telegraphy)
M. attended grammar school in Banská Štiavnica until 1880 and then studied theology in Bratislava and in Gran until 1884, where he started intensively dealing
with electricity. After further painting study in Budapest and in Munich, and after he worked as a curate in several places in Slovakia, he was moved to Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania (the USA) in 1896 where 65 Slovak families lived.
After Heinrich Hertz in 1888 satisfactory demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves, Nikola →Tesla, Alexander Stepanovič Popov and Guglielmo Marconi in 1896 registered a patent for wireless telegraphy and processed the technical basis for wireless transmission of information. M. quickly realized the importance of these developments and started working on their improvements.
Unlike Marconi he used two different signal frequencies for dot and dash, which had the same duration. On 2nd October 1903 he declared his first patent in Washington and on 10th May 1904, received the rights for two key patents by the Patent Office in Washington: the apparatus for wireless telegraphy and the way of transmitted messages by wireless telegraphy.
Based on the first two patents, he created the Universal Ether Telegraph Co.
M. set a laboratory in Wilkes-Barre and erected a 60-metre high antenna mast which enabled him to receive news from Scranton and Brooklyn, located 30 and 200 km from Wilkes-Barre. A storm destroyed the antenna mast in 1905, but M. was not dissuaded from his plans and continued to file patents in the next years: Wave meter (1907), Electrical transformer (1907), Magnetic detector (1909), Apparatus for making electromagnetic waves (1908), Wireless telegraphy (1909), Magnetic waves detector (1909), Method of and apparatus for making electrical alternating current oscillations (1916), Apparatus for making electrical oscillations (1911), Spinning reel for fishing rod (1912).
In 1920 M. returned to Slovakia. His aim to teach electrical engineering at school was not fulfilled, for he had to present certificate of his education, which he was unable to do. Embittered he again returned to Wilkes-Barre, where he died after a heart attack on 11th May 1929.
