RadCom April 2024, Vol. 100, No. 4

April 2024 69 Feature In 1932 Marconi installed a UHF radiotelephone system between Vatican City and the Pope’s summer palace at Castel Gandolfo. Marconi continued investigating these higher frequencies for use in radio navigation and in 1935 gave a demonstration of the principles of radar. Marconi’s passing and legacy Guglielmo Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937. He was aged sixty-three. His death was the result of the ninth heart attack that he had suffered. He was awarded an Italian State Funeral and all wireless transmitters in the world fell silent for two minutes. His remains lie in the Mausoleum of Guglielmo Marconi built by Mussolini in the grounds of Villa Griffone, the family home at Pontecchio, where he carried out his earliest experiments, and which was renamed Sasso-Marconi in his honour in 1938. That milestone in communication from Poldhu to St Johns was made over one hundred and twenty years ago by an outstanding young man. Then, the science behind Marconi’s equipment was outside of contemporary understanding and for most people being akin to magic or the dark arts. It is remarkable to consider the progress made to this day from those crude, poorly understood and hazardous beginnings, to the wireless networking of computers and information networks which we all both use and take for granted. Marconi was credited as being ‘the inventor of radio’ and lived a truly remarkable life, both personally and through his international business empire. He was a tenacious visionary who combined good fortune and opportunity to develop technologies that we recognise today, such as smartphones, Wi-Fi, radar, and radio navigation concepts with which we are all familiar and depend upon in our daily lives. In 1937, a granite monument was erected on the cliff top to the southwest of the Poldhu Wireless Station which commemorates the ‘pioneer work carried out by research experts and radio engineers’ ( Photo 3 ). At its top is an icon derived from a logo used by the Marconi Company of a globe spanned by the letter ‘M’ symbolising Marconi. This logo has been further developed for use by Poldhu Amateur Radio Club with an energy flash of a spark between the two antennas created by the tops of the ‘M’ with the bottom surmounted upon the three dots of the Morse Code letter ‘S’ ( Figure 1 ). The Marconi Centre at Poldhu Today the Marconi Centre at Poldhu ( Photos 1 and 2 ) celebrates and memorialises the achievements of Guglielmo Marconi ( Photo 4 ) who in 1901 is credited with transmitting the first transatlantic wireless telegraphy signal to St Johns Newfoundland. His achievement led to wireless encompassing the globe and becoming today’s mainstay of human communication. The Centre is located on the site of the Poldhu Wireless Station and is a commemoration of the pioneering experiments in wireless telegraphy and telephony which took place there. The Centre, as it stands today, was opened on 25 April 2001, exactly one hundred years after that first transatlantic transmission was made. It was opened by Lady Mary Holborow, the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, in the presence of Marconi’s grandson, also named Guglielmo. A message of greeting was read from Queen Elizabeth to the people of Canada, and at 4pm the three dots of the letter ‘S’ in Morse code were transmitted to radio amateurs in Newfoundland. The Marconi Centre was built by the National Trust, with support from the Marconi Company and European funding, and is operated on their behalf by the Poldhu Amateur Radio Club. Volunteer guides welcome visitors and offer them the chance to discover the life story of Marconi, and the part that Poldhu played in developing wireless telegraphy and then telephony, until its closure in 1933. Displays and presentations lead visitors through history, explaining how the personalities of Marconi and his colleagues, and their experiments with wireless technology and this Cornish clifftop field, played their part in one of the greatest technological achievements of all time. Over its lifespan of thirty-three years, the Poldhu Wireless Station changed radically as the technology of what we now know as ‘radio’ developed from those somewhat shambolic beginnings in 1901. Little remains of the buildings or antennas apart from their foundations. However, the site, and what it went on to achieve, are still an important part of radio’s heritage and The National Trust and Poldhu Amateur Radio Club are committed to maintaining it. The celebration On 25 April 2024, Poldhu Amateur Radio Club will be marking the 150th Anniversary of Marconi’s birth with an operating open day at the Marconi Centre. Visitors including local dignitaries and representatives of the media will be welcomed. All those visiting, as ever, will be able to browse the displays and have their questions answered by club members and volunteers. The club’s radio rooms will be operating on the HF amateur bands with the callsign GB2GM. Wherever possible, visiting licensed radio amateurs will be offered the chance to use the Club’s equipment. In the afternoon, calls will be made to radio clubs in Canada and the USA and greetings exchanged leading up to the recreation of the historic transatlantic communication of the Morse letter ‘S’. Special souvenir t-shirts, emblazoned with the event logo, and mugs will be available. There will also be a special QSL card for all stations who contact Poldhu. The 150th birthday event will be a collaboration with the International Marconi Day celebrations held on the Saturday closest to Marconi’s birthday, which this year is on 27 April. On that day the Poldhu Amateur Radio Club stations will once again be on the air to participate in the worldwide commemoration. The aim of International Marconi Day is to operate radio stations from Marconi radio and wireless stations around the world so that radio amateurs can, by their contacts, commemorate the achievements of Guglielmo Marconi. Further information will be available on the Marconi Centre website at gb2gm.org where times and visiting information will be updated. James Woolford, G8GLL g8gll@gb2gm.org PHOTO 2: Marconi Centre display area. PHOTO 4: Guglielmo Marconi. PHOTO 3: The Marconi Monument at Poldhu.