Guglielmo Marconi was born on the morning of 25th of April 1874 at the Palazzo Marescalchi in the Italian city of Bologna. Guglielmo being Italian for William. Marconi was the son of a well-to-do business man called Giuseppe and his second wife, Annie.

Annie came from an Scotish - Irish family called the Jamesons, who were, and are famous as whisky distillers. Annie was born at Daphne Castle, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland, and went to study music at the Bologna Conservatory. As a young man Marconi read about the work of Heinrich Hertz in an Italian electrical journal, but they had only been of passing interest to Marconi at that time.

One summer Marconi went to a hotel in the Alps with his step brother Luigi and brother Alfonso and one night, with the cent and rustle of the pine trees just outside his window, the 20 year old youth lay awake unable to sleep. For some reason his mind went back to Hertz. Suddenly, in a shinning moment of inspiration the tremendous idea was born. With the aid of Hertz discoveries he could use the Hertzian waves of the air for telegraphy without wires.

The idea seemed so simple and obvious to Marconi he couldn't believe others hadn't had the idea before him. Marconi wrote "I knew there were many clever men in the world experimenting with waves, and I thought someone would quickly work out the problem" After waiting almost a year" he writes "without seeing any account of attempted application of the discoveries of Hertz to the transmission of signals, I began my first experiments in December 1894..."

Two rooms at the top of the Villa Grifone were now set aside for guglielmo's experiments and except for servants who were now and then allowed in to clean, only two persons ever saw the inside of these rooms: Marconi himself and his mother. He had to collect together a variety of electrical equipment, Batteries, transformers and oscillators, bells and wires....wires were everywhere.

Then, night after night, while all the villa slept, the young Marconi kept his night light burning brightly in the silence of December darkness. Working with doors locked and eating nothing, he devoted all his time trying produce a radio signal strong enough to be detected by a very crude receiver. Just before the January of 1895 Marconi writes "I at once obtained results, which surprised me, and which I realised were new."

One night Guglielmo went and woke his mother, and brought her to his secret attics. He was about to show her something he considered important. On a table was an electric key. He pressed it. Instantly, in the next attic, thirty feet away, a bell sounded. There were no wires connecting it to the key, an electric impulse alone had made the bell ring, across space. Such a thing had not happened since the world began. It was small, but it was tremendous.

At that moment, as the young engineer in science and his mother stood alone together in the sleeping Italian villa, and a new age was born. It was the age that began with a small bell ringing, and was soon to here a message flashed across the Atlantic.

"The air" Wrote a man in London not long after, "is full of promises of miracles"

But that was yet to come...

By the end of 1895 using home made apparatus he sent long wave signals over a distance of 1 mile from the garden in Bologna. He then came to england in February 1896 and established the Marconi company at chelmsford, Essex in 1897. On the 2nd of June 1896 Marconi was granted his first patent, number 12039 covering transmission by wireless telegraphy and by July had conducted tests from the General post office building in London covering 1.5 miles. By the 2nd of September 1896 this had already increased to 8 miles with tests at Salisbury plain.

The next step was to establish that communications was possible over water, and on 11 May 1897 tests were carried out across the Bristol channel from Lavernock point, Near Penarth to the Island of Holm, a distance of 3.5 miles. This was the first time Marconi worked with a new acquaintance, George S. Kemp who was to remain one of Marconi's closest friends and assistant until his death in 1933.

In July 1898, the Daily Express was the first newspaper in history to obtain news by wireless telegraphy and in August 1898 wireless was installed on the Royal yatch Osborne for Queen Victoria. In December 1898 wireless communication was established between the East Goodwin light ship and the South Foeland lighthouse and on the 3rd of March the following year, for the first time, wireless was used for the saving of life. Summer 1899 finally saw cross channel wireless in use and on 15 November 1899 the first ocean newspaper published bulletins sent by wireless.

On the 26th of April 1900 Marconi took out his patent number 7777 for "Tuned Syntonic Telegraphy". This invention introduced tuned circuits to wireless for the first time, and enabled a wireless set to be tuned to a particular station just as a radio set can be tuned today.

On 23rd January 1901 the first long distance transmission was made from the Isle of Wight to The Lizzard in cornwall. A distance of 196 miles.

On 26th November 1901 Marconi and his two assitants, G.S.Kemp and P.W.Paget sailed on the Sardinian from Liverpool for St.Johns, New foundland to start transatlantic tests. They arrived in New Foundland on the 6th of December. On Thursday the 12th of December 1901 Marconi succeeded in transmitting and receiving transatlantic signals and the morse letter "S" was received at Signal hill, St.Johns, New foundland from Poldhu, Cornwall using a kite aerial at Signal Hill.

The British admiralty, the government and investors were immediately impressed and 2 years later Marconi was able to set up the worlds first radio factory in Chelmsford where his company is still in business today. (G.E.C. Marconi)

When the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912 it was messages from the ships Marconi wireless that summoned help and saved many lives. Within less than a lifetime it would lead to communications and entertainment sent around the Earth by radio and indeed leave this Earth completely when VHF and UHF bands started to be used in the middle of the century.

Now we take for granted the use of microwaves beamed up to satellites in orbit above the Earth, something Marconi could probably foresee but only ever dream to achieve. By the mid 1930's Marconi's health was failing. Radio had put nations in closer touch with each other, he had seen the first developments of television and understood the principles of Radar and microwaves.

On the 19th of July 1937 the great man died, and wireless stations around the world agreed to close down their transmitters for a short time as a mark of respect.