Background
Ferrié was born in Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, Savoie.
Ferrié was born in Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, Savoie.
École Polytechnique.
After being named to a committee exploring wireless telegraphy between France and England, in 1899 he carried out such communications in collaboration with Guglielmo Marconi. In 1903 Ferrié invented a novel electrolytic detector, invented independently by Doctor Michael I. Pupin (1899), Professor Reginald A. Fessenden (1903), and West. Schloemilch (1903). That same year he also proposed setting aerials on the Eiffel Tower for long-range radiotelegraphy.
Under his direction a transmitter was set up in the tower, and its effective range increased from an initial 400 km (250 mi) to 6,000 km (3,700 mi) by 1908.
He then developed mobile transmitters for military units. Ferrié headed the French Radiotelegraphie Militaire before and during World War I, where in 1914 he led two linked advances in military radio communications: practical ground telegraphy made feasible by the adoption of vacuum tubes within radio receivers.
The transmitter was a buzzer, and the receiver an amplifier with triode. By the end of the war the French had produced almost 10,000 such sets.
Ferrié was made a General in 1919 and so remained until his death, having been exempted from retirement rules by a special law of 1930, and became general inspector of military telegraphy.
He was the first president of the French National Committee of Geodesy and Géophysique (1920–1926), president of the International Scientific Radio Union (Union Radio - Scientifique Internationale (International Union of Radio Science)) and the International Commission on Longitudes by Radio, and vice president of the International Board of Scientific Unions. Ferrié died on 16 February 1932, at the Val-du-Grâce military hospital in Paris. Today the Espace Ferrié (Musée des Transmissions) continues his memory in Cesson-Sévigné.
A college named "collège Ferrié" is located in Draguignan and in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.
French Academy of Sciences.