Abstract
A GRANITE column has been erected by the Marconi Company at Poldhu Cove, Cornwall, on November 21, to mark the site of the former Poldhu wireless station. A plaque on the monument states that the Poldhu wireless station, designed by J. A. (now Sir Ambrose) Fleming, occupied that site from 1900 until 1933. A second plaque states that the Poldhu station was used for the first trans-oceanic service of wireless telegraphy, which was opened with a second Marconi station at Glace Bay, in Canada, in 1902. There is also a third plaque, which commemorates the fact that in 1923 and 1924 C. S. Franklin, inventor of the Franklin beam aerial, directed from there his shortwave wireless beam transmission to Marconi on his yacht Elettra, cruising in the South Atlantic. These experiments laid the foundation of modern high-speed radio-telegraphic communication to and from all quarters of the globe. Mr. H. A. White, chairman of the Marconi Company, who presided, said that Marconi had always realized that inventors working under the auspices of the company which bore his name do not usually receive adequate recognition. Most of the success of modern methods of radio-telegraphy and radiotelephony, and many other wonderful achievements in scientific technique, can be traced back to Sir Ambrose Fleming's invention of the thermionic valve in 1904.
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Monument to Wireless Pioneers. Nature 140, 926 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140926a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140926a0