SEEING THE INVISIBLE WITH MARCONI
The Italian Ministry of Culture is commemorating Guglielmo Marconi, the pioneer of radio communications, with a major exhibition in Rome's monumental Victor Emanuel Memorial to mark the 150th anniversary of the scientist's birth.
The multi-medial exhibition, complete with rare and exclusive material supplied by Cinecittà, Italy's major cinema studios and the historic Luce Archives of photographic material, was launched on the 8th November with the title: “Seeing the Invisible”
Meanwhile, other exhibitions and tributes to Marconi's genius are being staged all over Italy, with special initiatives involving the Marconi Foundation, located in the Villa Griffone near Bologna. This was Marconi's family residence and where he conducted some of his earliest experiments with “wireless” communications.
Marconi conducted most of his experiments from his yacht, the Elettra, the name that he also gave his daughter, now aged 94. A living custodian of her father's memory, she is much in demand this year by both Italian and foreign media.
Marconi was forced to move his operation and experiments from Italy to Great Britain in 1896 when he was unable to obtain sufficient funding from the Italian government. Within a year, he was able to transmit signals over a distance of 12 miles and took out his first patents. In 1901 he successfully made his first transatlantic contact in the form of the morse code letter “S” between Newfoundland in Canada and Poldhu in Cornwall.
Originally, the potential importance of his experiments were underestimated – until the Titanic disaster in 1912. The doomed ship was equipped with radio transmitters but the signals were not picked up immediately and rescue ships were slow in arriving. Nonetheless, some 700 survivors were saved and the era of modern communications was born.
“Seeing the Invisible” runs until the 25th April 2025
M. STENHOUSE
Info: Museo Marconi at Villa Griffone: Tel.- +39.051.846121) www.museomarconi.it
“Vedere l'Invisibile” https://cultura.gov.it www.archivioluce.com
