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Guglieimo Marconi was born on April 24th 1874 at Bologna, Italy. He was the second son of a "runaway" marriage

between Guiseppe Marconi a wealthy landowner and Annie Jamieson of the Irish whiskey dynasty.

Guglieimo grew up on the family estate at Villa Griffone and In 1892 he graduated from the Technical Institute of Livorno. When his application to join the navy was rejected young Marconi concentrated on his experiments with the spark transmitter circuit invented by Heinrich Hertz five years earlier. His father despaired, but his mother supported him. "If only grown-ups understood what harm they can do children," she once explained. "They think nothing of constantly interrupting their train of thought."

Just turned twenty, Marconi started experimented In the villa attic. In other parts of the world other scientists were experimenting with Hertzs breakthrough with more resources and experience, but Marconi had two advantages, a fresh imagination and a useful neighbour. Augosto Right was Professor of Physics and a world expert on electromagnetism.

The Impact of the Telegraph

Hertz had discovered the longest waves of the electromagnetic spectrum that include gamma, x-rays, visible light, infrared,' ultraviolet and microwaves. When Hertz died in 1894 Professor Right wrote his obituary.

After Marconi read it he had an idea "so elementary, so simple in logic that it seemed difficult to believe that no one else had thought of putting it into practice."

Marconi's idea was to use the new Hertzian radio waves to send telegraph messages without wires.

Telegraphy, sending electronic messages along metal wires, had been theorised by the Island genius Robert Hooke back

In the seventeenth century, but it was only after the start of the Industrial Revolution that it became practically possible.

Before telegraphy was invented in 1837, the fastest means of communication was the speed of a sailing ship or a galloping horse, aided by visual signals in clear weather.

Telegraphy changed the world. Messages could how be sent and received almost instantly by the dot-dash Morse code.

In 1850 the first submarine telegraph line was laid between England and France. Over the next decades the world was linked for the first time by trans-oceanic submarine cables. In 1876 the telephone was invented eventually replacing electric blips with the human voice.

In 1894 Professor Oliver Lodge invented wireless transmission at Oxford but did not see its potential. Back in Villa Griffone that same year Marconi was managing to send radio signals a few feet across the attic. In the summer of 1895 his experiments moved into the garden and signals were picked up at ever greater distances from the house. In September a gunshot from his brother Alfonso confirmed the signal had been picked up at 21km away.

The Selling of an Idea

The Marconis took their idea to the Italian Post Office which rejected it, so in February 1896 Guglieimo and his mother

arrived in London to ask the help of her well connected cousin, Henry Jamieson Davles. He introduced them to William Preece, the Engineer in Chief of the Post Office, which controlled the monopoly of telegraph and telephones.

With the support of the British Post Office Marconi's experiments Progressed rapidly In March 1897, they were able to transit 5km across Salisbury Plain, in May 14km across the Bristol Channel and in October 54km from Bath to Salisbury. By this time Marconi had a patent and had formed a private company, so now he lost Post Office support.

It was clear that the most practical use for radio transmissions would be at sea where ships still sailed blind once out of sight of land. After a spectacular return to Italy Marconi came to the Isle of Wight to set up the first permanent wireless station at the Royal Needles Hotel. Alum Bay was remote enough to be free of electrical interference.

The working capital of the new company was used to convert the hotel's billiard room and vessels were hired and fitted with aerials and receivers. A huge mast, 168 feet high, had to be hauled up the face of Alum Bay, requiring the help of most of the able bodied men of Totland.

Totland's sub-postmaster Mr. Joseph Bartlett Garlick later recalled testing the equipment at the Hotel. Asked to send a message he tapped the world "Marconi" into the transmitter. To his surprise a moving bar at the end of the table, not visibly connected, repeated the world. "He picked up the letters on his instrument and was obviously delighted that I had chosen to send his name"

From December 6th 1897 experiments began and despite three weeks of "atrocious" weather the radio signals were successfully received at a rate of four words a minute on the receiving ships.

Marconi wrote to Preece to say they were often working up to their knees in water in the rolling winter seas.

Growth & Decline

In January 1898 Marconi established another station at Bournemouth where the former Prime Minister William Ewart

Gladstone was terminally ill. When snowstorms destroyed the telegraph wires Marconi offered to carry the newspaper

journalists' reports via radio back to the Needles, making this the first radio news.

Experiments at the Needles continued throughout 1898 and 1899 Transmissions to ships at sea extended out to 64km. Scientists flocked to visit the "Needles Wireless Telegraph Station" In June 1898 the great scientist Lord Kelvin visited with the Second Lord Tennyson. Kelvin sent the following message to Glasgow University "Tell BIyth this is transmitted commercially through ether from Alum Bay to Bournemouth and by postal telegraph thence to Glasgow"

He insisted on paying a token shilling for each copy making this the first commercial radio transmission.

In August Marconi was summoned to Osborne House to establish radio communication between Queen Victoria at the palace and the Prince of Wales aboard the Royal Yacht. They exchanged 150 messages and the queen was said to be "delighted".

In 1899 developments moved rapidly on new stations established on lightships and on the English east coast; the first ship to shore message, the first shipwreck rescue, the first use of the international distress signal, and the first transmissions to France.

Later that year, on November 15th 1899, Marconi was travelling back from the USA on the liner SS St Paul. While still 80km from the Island he received enough information from the Needles Station to publish the world's first newspaper published at sea, The Transatlantic Times.