Marconi experiments with radio waves
Marconi experiments | 1897 | Period: Victorian
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was born in Bologna, Italy, the second son of a wealthy Italian landowner and an Irish mother.
Marconi travelled to Britain in 1896 and filed his final specification for the world's first patent for a system of telegraphy using waves, without wires. He carried out demonstrations on Salisbury Plain and also across the Bristol Channel.
The Isle of Wight was the scene of many early Marconi experiments. In 1897 he set up an aerial and installed apparatus in the grounds of the Royal Needles Hotel, Alum Bay, where he successfully communicated with two hired paddle steamers.
The Marconi Monument within The Needles Park marks the precise location where he undertook his pioneering work that led to radio and all the telecommunications we know today.
Also in this Period:
- Queen Victoria Dies
- Marconi experiments with radio waves
- The Tennyson Monument unveiled
- Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest opens
- Julia Margaret Cameron takes first photo's at Dimbola
- Cowes and Newport join the railway age
- Needles Old Battery built
- New Needles lighthouse planned
- Sailing race around the Isle of Wight won by America
- Charles Dickens writes David Copperfield
- Victoria and Albert buy Osborne House
- UK's first theme park opens at Blackgang Chine
- Work starts on St. Catherine's lighthouse
- Algernon Charles Swinburne