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The history of scientific method begins with Observation, and all else leads from that. But in the case of Marconi, there was no natural phenomena in the observable universe, that would lead an observer to ask "Why?". No evidence if spectral bandwidth, suggested by rotation of seasons, or lightning, or falling apples or overflowing bathtubs or avian flight..
Marconi saw a universe that did not announce itself to earlier observers. Any thoughts?
Marconi wasn't working in the dark. He started his work in wireless telegraphy in 1894, using the work of Henrich Hertz.
In 1888 Hertz demonstrated that he could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation, something James Clerk Maxwell described in 1865 in his paper "A Dynamic Theory of the Electromagnetic Field".
Yeah, I had to look some of it up.
But I had already known that Maxwell had devised his equations for electromagnetic fields well before Marconi started his work. Many considered Maxwell's work to be the cap stone of Newtonian physics; in a modern sense, the three most important physicists are Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein. Being a math major who also had to get through several undergraduate courses in physics, I was introduced not only to calculus but also Maxwell's equations, which were a big part of the Electromagnetic part of physics that I was taught. I can't recite any of them now, but back in the day I need to memorize all of them if I was going to get through that third physics course.
Of course, someone down-field gets credit for the working model of all inventions, I didn't mean to dispite that.
But my main point was that most other inventions arose from an exploration of phenomena already known and wondered about for centuries. Any ten-year-old can reach an "Aha!" moment if you explain a steam or ICE engine, based on visible-world analogies, but try that with radio propagation.
That being said, who knows what other events lie unseen and un-wondered about in the visible universe. We certainly haven't, with Hertz or whomever, found the last of the unimagined.
Marconi wasn't working in the dark. He started his work in wireless telegraphy in 1894, using the work of Henrich Hertz.
And, as the Supreme Court ruled, he also used several of Tesla's patents.
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