Radio waves were known as 'Hertzian Waves' when Marconi began experimenting in 1894. A few years earlier Heinrich Hertz had produced and detected the waves across his laboratory. Marconi's achievement was to produce and detect the waves over long distances, laying the foundations for what today we know as radio.

The family home was his Italian father's villa near Bologna. His Irish mother often took Guglielmo to visit relatives in England and his formal education suffered. But in Bologna their neighbour, the distinguished physicist Professor Righi, interested the young Guglielmo in electricity generally and the work of Hertz in particular.

Marconi repeated Hertz's experiments in the villa attics. Hertzian waves were produced by sparks in one circuit and detected in another circuit a few metres away. Marconi could soon detect signals over several kilometres and this led him to try and interest the Italian Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs.

He was unsuccessful, but in 1896 his cousin, Henry Jameson-Davis, arranged an introduction to Nyilliam Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Office. Encouraging demonstrations in London and on Salisbury Plain followed and in 1897 Marconi obtained a patent and established the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company
Limited, which opened the world's first radio factory at Chelmsford, England in 1898.

Experiments and demonstrations continued. Queen Victoria at Osborne House received bulletins by radio about the health of the Prince of Wales, convalescent on the Royal Yacht off Cowes. In 1901 signals were received across the Atlantic. Broadcasting as we know it was still in the future - the BBC was established in 1922 - but Marconi had achieved his aim of turning Hertz's laboratory demonstration into a practical means of communication and established in Chelmsford the Company which still bears his name.

Sir Neil Cossons, O.B.E.
Director, Science Museum

Chelmsford, England