SOS message

In 1899 Marconi transmitted a signal across the English Channel. In the same year his wireless technology sent out a genuine SOS message and saved a sinking ship in the North Sea. In December 1901 Marconi announced that he head successfully transmitted the Morse Code letter “S” from Poldhu in Cornwall to a receiver at St. John’s in Newfoundland. He had achieved this using a 400-foot (121 m) radio antenna supported by box kites. It was the modest dawn of a revolution in communications that within the century was to transform the world totally.

Sponsors

Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy and was frustrated in his early efforts to develop wireless telegraphy in his native country. When he was 21 years old, he came to Britain with his mother in search for sponsors. He found support in Sir William Preece, the Post Office’s chief electrical engineer, who helped publicize Marconi’s wireless telegraphy system. In addition, he began a series of increasingly powerful radio transmissions of Morse Code signals over both land and water.

Fascism

Radio made Marconi a wealthy man, but the commercial development of his invention was bedeviled by disputes with rivals, both technical and commercial. An insider-dealing scandal in Marconi shares nearly brought down the British government in 1912.

Marconi later returned to Italy, where he became an enthusiastic supporter of fascism- dictator Benito Mussolini was best man at his second wedding in 1927. He died of cancer in Rome in 1937 at age 63.