of inspiration for new achievements for the benefit of humanity exist in them”. A smile lighting up his face, my husband told me, “When I told one of our farm-workers Marchi to go with my brother Alfonso to the other side of the hill and listen for the first signal I sent from Villa Griffone I asked him to fire a shot the moment he heard it. I sent the signal of the letter “S” with the transmitter I had built for this experiment. On the other side of the hill I had set up a receiver which I had also built myself that picked up my signal perfectly. Just think, my dear Cristina, what enormous satisfaction I felt when I heard the shot after working so hard to achieve my aim: to communicate in the open, even surmounting obstacles!” In that historic moment, as he himself said, wireless telegraphy was born. I, too, understood that this perfectly successful experiment had marked the beginning of a new era which was to transform our whole existence. Starting from this first positive result, Guglielmo continued to develop and perfect his invention. He succeeded in transmitting over greater and greater distances also by using the power of conduction of the earth which was then unknown. An extraordinary intuition of my husband’s in the field of the propagation of electro-magnetic waves concerned the conductivity of the earth in long-distance transmissions. With his brilliant mind he invented and perfected the antenna-earth system, the essential key to the development of the entire radio-telegraphic system.
In the same year, 1895, after his first demonstration experiments at Pontecchio, Guglielmo showed his invention to the military authorities and representatives of the Italian Government in Rome but unfortunately without success. “They didn’t believe me!” he told me. There is an eloquent little picture by Bemporad in the Domenica del Corriere of the time which illustrates this. So he said to his mother: “Mother, you are English; let us go to London”. Wasting no time, he collected together the various pieces of his scientific instruments in a big wooden crate which he took with him and he and his mother left for London. Guglielmo had always been very fond of England which he thought of as his second home and which he had often visited when he was a boy. He arrived there full of confidence and enthusiasm with his exceptional invention for wireless communication through the ether. In London, Guglielmo was made welcome and the importance of his invention immediately understood. He was glad to meet his cousin Henry Jameson Davis again. Henry was a good-looking man with a very exuberant character, a few years older than him. Guglielmo was always grateful to him because of the kindness he showed him during this stay in London which was so important for his future. I remember that when I went to London with Guglielmo many years later I too met his cousin Henry Jameson Davis who always showed his sincere affection for my husband. He was Colonel of the Regiment of Irish Volunteers and wore his smart uniform with pride.
Thanks to a letter of introduction from A.A. Campell Swinton, an eminent electrical engineer of the day, Guglielmo was able to show his invention to Mr. William Preece, then Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, who immediately understood its enormous scientific value: it would make it possible for the Great Britain of Queen Victoria to communicate with its Dominions all over the world quickly and in secret. From then on--this was 1896--he lived more in London than in Italy. He recognized that the English had believed in him and recalled with emotion his first experiences in radio transmission: one from the roof of the General Post Office, another from the roof of St.Thomas’s Hospital across the Thames and still another from the “Needles”, rocks near the Isle of Wight, across the Solent.
Guglielmo told me that after the world-wide recognition of his discovery, his father felt sorry that he had ever had doubts about his son’s success. When the newspapers spoke of him and his inventions, he cut out the articles and the photographs and kept them carefully, regretting that he had not believed in him right from the beginning.
My husband told me some other stories about his youth at Villa Griffone. I remember one in particular; about the bicycle. He wanted one that so he could go to the nearby village, which is now called Sasso Marconi, to get the materials he needed for the construction of his apparatus there in the granary. He had no money of his own to spend and his father was strict and did not approve of buying things which seemed to him to be strange and useless. Finally Guglielmo persuaded him to lend him twenty-five lire and so was able to buy himself the longed-for bicycle. He often used it to go to Sasso and get what he needed immediately. As soon as he could, to his great satisfaction, he repaid his father the twenty-five lire.
Years later I often went to Bologna with my husband and I loved visiting the places where he had spent his summers as a boy with his parents and where he had begun his first experiments in radio-telegraphy. One day in September, 1928 Guglielmo took me to the church of Pontecchio. The church had been decorated especially for our visit; there were flowers everywhere and they had prepared a stool for us to kneel upon, covered in red damask silk, which was usually kept just for weddings. Many people from the village and the neighbourhood were present and when we came out of the church everyone greeted us joyously, clapping and cheering as we went by because Guglielmo, like his father, was much loved by the farm-workers and employees of the Marconi estates.
My husband wanted me to meet the Parish Priest, Don Domenico Calzolari, who had been there ever since Guglielmo was a child. The priest, who was now ninety years old, remembered him very well and told me: AWhen I went to visit the Marconi family at Villa Griffone for the first time, I took a lamb as a present, with a little bell tied around its neck with a red ribbon. How Guglielmo jumped for joy! He was a beautiful child of about two or three, with fair hair and blue eyes. He often came to Pontecchio with his father in a light four-wheeled gig, drawn by two ponies with smart red English harness, given him by his mother.
Guglielmo had very happy memories of the summer months that he spent with his parents at Pontecchio during his childhood and adolescence. One of his best friends was the little Tettè Malvasìa, whose family were friends and neighbours there in the country. He loved the long warm days and said that the summer was never too hot at Villa Griffone. He told me that in the afternoons he used to go for long walks on their land and as he walked he always thought about the possibility of communicating over a distance using electro-magnetic waves. He would throw little stones into the ponds to study the phenomenon of the concentric circles that formed in the water; he always had the propagation of waves in mind. He stuck sticks in the stream to test the antenna which upset the women who came to do their washing there. He often climbed to the top of the hill to admire the sunset. My husband had the soul of a poet and the beauties of nature moved him deeply. A beautiful sunset or the changeable appearance of the sea could send him into raptures. Sometimes as we sailed on board the Elettra he held me close as we stood on the bridge and together we watched the stormy sea in silence and admiration.
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