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History - Memorials & Monuments

In Honour & Memory

Guglielmo Marconi

Logo: Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council
Michael Malin Plaque, Michael Mailn Station Crofton Road
Previous		 Guglielmo Marconi Illustration Moran Park House Patrick Moran Photograph
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GUGLIELMO MARCONI

Guglielmo Marconi, was born in Bologna, Italy on April 25, 1874. By the age of 21 Marconi had succeeded in transmitting and detecting radio signals.

Guglielmo Marconi Plaque and Photograph

In July 1897 Marconi formed The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Ltd. One of its first paid commissions was to report on one of the highlights of the yachting calendar, the Kingstown Regatta. The event was sponsored by the Irish Daily Express newspaper. The paper's proprietors wanted Marconi to provide minute-by-minute reports on the races.

Marconi hired a tug the Flying Huntress, to which he fitted a 75ft antenna. According to a reporter on board "the tug the instruments were connected with the outer world by a copper wire, which was itself attached to a width of wire-netting - ordinary rabbit-netting it was - which ran up to the top of the improvised mast, and its meshes caught millions of the myriad electric waves which (when replies were coming) were generated at the land station and sent down to us here in the modest cabin of an unassuming tug-boat nine miles off shore. The wonder of it..."

A receiving station under the control of George Kemp at the Harbourmaster's House, now Moran Park House, was set up with similar instruments as to that out in Dublin Bay. During the two day event some 700 news flashes were sent, at ranges of 16-40km, and then forwarded to the newspaper offices.

A plaque commemorating the centenary of the event was unveiled in 1998.

All images and descriptive text used with permission Dun Laoghaire - Rathdown County Council

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