Marconi Research Centre is the former name of the current BAE Systems

BAE Systems

BAE Systems plc is a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, that has global interests, particularly in North America through its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. BAE is among the world's largest military contractors; in 2009 it was the...

 Advanced Technology Centre facility at Great Baddow

Great Baddow

Great Baddow is an urban village in the Chelmsford borough of Essex, England. It is close to the county town, Chelmsford and, with a population of over 13,000, is one of the largest villages in the country....

 in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, United Kingdom. Under its earlier name, research at this site spanned military and civilian technology covering the full range of products offered by GEC-Marconi, including radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, radar

Radar

Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

, telecommunications, mechatronics

Mechatronics

Mechatronics is the combination of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, computer engineering, software engineering, control engineering, and systems design engineering in order to design, and manufacture useful products. Mechatronics is a multidisciplinary field of engineering, that is...

 and microelectronics

Microelectronics

Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture of very small electronic components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-scale or smaller,. These devices are made from semiconductors...

.

The centre was originally built by the Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company

Marconi Company

The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company...

 to bring together their various radio, television and telephony research teams in a single location, and was opened in 1936 as the Marconi Research Laboratory. As the electronics industry developed the campus expanded during the 1940s and 1950s to include research into radar, general physics, high voltage, vacuum physics and semiconductors. At its peak the Centre employed more than 1,200 engineers, technicians, craftsmen and support staff. It was also home to the Marconi Company

Marconi Company

The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company...

's museum containing numerous original artifacts from the pioneering period of Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...

's work on wireless telegraphy

Wireless telegraphy

Wireless telegraphy is a historical term used today to apply to early radio telegraph communications techniques and practices, particularly those used during the first three decades of radio before the term radio came into use....

.

The site still includes a prominent local landmark, a 360 feet (109.7 m)-high (110 m) former Chain Home

Chain Home

Chain Home was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the British before and during the Second World War. The system otherwise known as AMES Type 1 consisted of radar fixed on top of a radio tower mast, called a 'station' to provide long-range detection of...

 radar tower visible across the surrounding countryside.

Notable Marconi Research employees and scientists

• Sir Christopher Cockerell
  Christopher Cockerell
  Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE FRS was an English engineer, inventor of the hovercraft.-Life:Cockerell was born in Cambridge, where his father, Sir Sydney Cockerell, was curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, having previously been the secretary of William Morris. Christopher Cockerell was...
  
  
• Sir Eric Eastwood
  Eric Eastwood (engineer)
  Sir Eric Eastwood was a British scientist, engineer and Fellow of the Royal Society, who helped develop radar technology during World War II....
  
  , FRS
• Thomas Eckersley
  Thomas Eckersley
  Thomas Lydwell Eckersley FRS was an English theoretical physicist and engineer.Eckersley was born in London. He was educated at Bedales School, University College, London, where he gained a degree in engineering, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a second degree in mathematics...
  
  , FRS
• Bernard de Neumann
  Bernard de Neumann
  Frederick Bernard de Neumann is a British mathematician, computer scientist, inventor, and naval historian. In Austria and Germany he is known as Bernhard von Neumann....
  
  
• Peter Wright
  Peter Wright
  Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
  
  , author of Spycatcher