The plaque reads:
"From this site / Guglielmo / Marconi / made the first / public transmission / of wireless signals / on 27 July 1896".
It is fitting that the plaque is on the wall of the BT building as BT are a world leader in telecommunications.
The BT web site advises that:
"The Central Telegraph Office (CTO) was transferred from Telegraph Street to the General Post Office (West) on 4 February, a building which was begun in 1869 on the site of the present BT Centre in Newgate Street/St Martin's Le Grand. GPO West, as it was known, was constructed of granite and portland stone and was originally four storeys high. Originally intended as a headquarters building, the CTO gradually occupied practically the whole building by the early 1890s; the increasing popularity of telegraphic communication was reflected in the growth of the number of staff and quantity of equipment required to meet this demand. A fifth floor was added to the building in 1884.
The CTO's role in the history of telecommunications is a significant one. The first London-Paris telephone service was controlled from here from 1891 and Marconi demonstrated his new system of wireless telegraphy on the roof of the building in 1896. In its heyday the CTO had direct communication with every large town in the UK and was the largest telegraph office in the world. At the peak of the telegraph service in 1945-46 it dealt with 64.9 million telegrams, compared to only 45,000 in 1880.
During wartime such an important communications centre was an obvious target, and the CTO suffered during both world wars. The damage in 1917 during the First World War was relatively minor, but the Second World War saw much more substantial damage; during a raid on 29 December 1940 the CTO was set alight by burning debris from adjacent buildings and the interior was totally destroyed. The shell of the building was refurbished to the first and second floors, and the unsafe upper floors dismantled. The building was reopened in June 1943, although by this time much of the telegraph work had been transferred to the outskirts of London.
Following the war, telegraphic traffic declined as more and more people turned to the telephone, and the CTO never regained its pre-war importance. It was gradually run down from 1959 as work was transferred to other locations and eventually closed in October 1962. It was subsequently declared unsafe and demolished in 1967. The site remained derelict for some years, presenting an ideal opportunity for excavations by the Department of Urban Archaeology of the Museum of London during 1975-1979, yielding much information on the earlier history of the site. Finally, planning permission was granted in 1979 for the construction of a new building: BT Centre, the present headquarters of BT, opened in 1984.
Jean Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903) invented the Baudot printing telegraph system using the multiplex principle suggested by Wheatstone. This was the first system to use a code consisting of five units of equal length."
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In this, the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, there is this item in the Postal Heritage blog:
"Previously on this blog we wrote about the connection between the Post Office aboard the Titanic, and the telegrams held in our collection concerning the sunken ship. Also on the Titanic was wireless equipment and two operators supplied by the Marconi company, which proved important in getting word to nearby vessels – and beyond – that the ship was sinking. The Post Office was a pioneer of telegraphic technology and had become interested in Marconi’s experimentation at a key point in the development of wireless telegraphy, so it could be argued that thanks to the Post Office many of the Titanic’s passengers were saved."
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The Nobel Prize website tells us the following about Marconi:
"Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman, and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in the County Wexford, Ireland. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. Even as a boy he took a keen interest in physical and electrical science and studied the works of Maxwell, Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others. In 1895 he began laboratory experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio where he succeeded in sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.
In 1896 Marconi took his apparatus to England where he was introduced to Mr. (later Sir) William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the Post Office, and later that year was granted the world's first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. He demonstrated his system successfully in London, on Salisbury Plain and across the Bristol Channel, and in July 1897 formed The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited (in 1900 re-named Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited). In the same year he gave a demonstration to the Italian Government at Spezia where wireless signals were sent over a distance of twelve miles. In 1899 he established wireless communication between France and England across the English Channel. He erected permanent wireless stations at The Needles, Isle of Wight, at Bournemouth and later at the Haven Hotel, Poole, Dorset.
In 1900 he took out his famous patent No. 7777 for "tuned or syntonic telegraphy" and, on an historic day in December 1901, determined to prove that wireless waves were not affected by the curvature of the Earth, he used his system for transmitting the first wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles.
Between 1902 and 1912 he patented several new inventions. In 1902, during a voyage in the American liner "Philadelphia", he first demonstrated "daylight effect" relative to wireless communication and in the same year patented his magnetic detector which then became the standard wireless receiver for many years. In December 1902 he transmitted the first complete messages to Poldhu from stations at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and later Cape Cod, Massachusetts, these early tests culminating in 1907 in the opening of the first transatlantic commercial service between Glace Bay and Clifden, Ireland, after the first shorter-distance public service of wireless telegraphy had been established between Bari in Italy and Avidari in Montenegro. In 1905 he patented his horizontal directional aerial and in 1912 a "timed spark" system for generating continuous waves.
In 1914 he was commissioned in the Italian Army as a Lieutenant being later promoted to Captain, and in 1916 transferred to the Navy in the rank of Commander. He was a member of the Italian Government mission to the United States in 1917 and in 1919 was appointed Italian plenipotentiary delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. He was awarded the Italian Military Medal in 1919 in recognition of his war service.
During his war service in Italy he returned to his investigation of short waves, which he had used in his first experiments. After further tests by his collaborators in England, an intensive series of trials was conducted in 1923 between experimental installations at the Poldhu Station and in Marconi's yacht "Elettra" cruising in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and this led to the establishment of the beam system for long distance communication. Proposals to use this system as a means of Imperial communications were accepted by the British Government and the first beam station, linking England and Canada, was opened in 1926, other stations being added the following year.
In 1931 Marconi began research into the propagation characteristics of still shorter waves, resulting in the opening in 1932 of the world's first microwave radiotelephone link between the Vatican City and the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Two years later at Sestri Levante he demonstrated his microwave radio beacon for ship navigation and in 1935, again in Italy, gave a practical demonstration of the principles of radar, the coming of which he had first foretold in a lecture to the American Institute of Radio Engineers in New York in 1922.
He has been the recipient of honorary doctorates of several universities and many other international honours and awards, among them the Nobel Prize for Physics, which in 1909 he shared with Professor Karl Braun, the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, the John Fritz Medal and the Kelvin Medal. He was decorated by the Tsar of Russia with the Order of St. Anne, the King of Italy created him Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus, and awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1902. Marconi also received the freedom of the City of Rome (1903), and was created Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy in 1905. Many other distinctions of this kind followed. In 1914 he was both created a Senatore in the Italian Senate and app ointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in England. He received the hereditary title of Marchese in 1929.
In 1905 he married the Hon. Beatrice O'Brien, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin, the marriage being annulled in 1927, in which year he married the Countess Bezzi-Scali of Rome. He had one son and two daughters by his first and one daughter by his second wife. His recreations were hunting, cycling and motoring.
Marconi died in Rome on July 20, 1937."
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