The Wireless Telegraph
Marconi Sends an S.
By the turn of the century, reporters had long made use of telegraph wires to transmit news to their papers. Innovations in the development of "wireless telegraphy," or radio, as it came to be known, proceeded rapidly in the first decade of the twentieth century. Wireless pioneer Guglielmo Marconi announced on 15 December 1901 that he had transmitted the letter S across two thousand miles from Cornwall in England to Newfoundland, Canada. While the press lionized Marconi as a heroic, humble, and tireless genius, his competitors pointed out that this feat was unverifiable. Only Marconi and his assistants had witnessed it.
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