On 12th December 1896, a young Italian inventor, just 22 years of age stood on the stage at Toynbee Hall in East London. He was assisting the then 62 year old Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, William Preece. Preece’s lecture to a packed audience in the Hall was to be the first public demonstration of Guglielmo Marconi’s new communication system. It did not need wires to send messages.

Marconi delighted the audience by ringing a bell on demand as he walked through the audience, sometimes over ten yards away from the ‘transmitter’.

The amazing thing was that there were no wires connecting the two boxes. Commonplace today, in 1896 it was almost ‘a kind of magic’.

Five short years later, after an almost continual and exhausting series of experiments, trials, tests, demonstrations and developments throughout the world, the young Italian now stood on a remote headland in the New World. Through a driving storm, he strained to listen for morse code signals sent from his huge transmitter station at Poldhu on the north Cornish coast. He had risked everything, including his Company and reputation, to try and get a wireless signal to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a huge leap of 2,170 miles and it was a long way from simply ringing a bell across a crowded Hall. When he sailed to Newfoundland the best range Marconi had so far achieved was just 255 miles, but on 12th December 1901, at 12.30pm, Marconi heard his signals. The morse letter S, three dots repeated 25 times. It was a kind of magic and the wireless age had begun. Marconi achieved all this and gave birth to the new age of wireless communication on land, sea and in the air in just five hectic years. He also changed the world forever.

This then is the story of that search for a reliable and practical wireless communication system. It was a search for distance and reliability and a search for public and scientific acceptance. It was also a fight for finance and against competitors who deployed every form of industrial espionage and legal claim to grab a piece of the new science. There were many others who worked with wireless waves at the same time and there are other claimants to the title of the ‘father of wireless’. But it was only Marconi who had the vision, self belief and force of character to drive his ideas home and build a company and a whole new industry, straight from the laboratory bench. With it he changed the world as we know it. That in itself was “A Kind of Magic.”

Coming Soon ..... A Kind of Magic

The Birth of the Wireless Age
Five Years that Changed the World
by Tim Wander.

Publication date is April 25th 2011.

The new edition is just £16.95.

Postage and packing - UK £3.50. Europe and ROW £5.50

For internet orders email timwander{at}compuserve.com - payment by paypal to same address.