On 12 December, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi triumphantly detected the reception of the morse letter S (dot-dot-dot) in St John's, Newfoundland after its transmission across the Atlantic by radio waves sent from Poldhu in Cornwall, near Mullion on the Lizard Peninsula. The recent centenary of this historic event was commemorated by the opening of a new Visitor Centre at Poldhu where the history is recorded, artifacts from the period will he collected and the Poldhu Amateur Radio Club will have its home base. The fact that Ambrose Fleming (of right and left hand rule fame) was working as a consultant to the Marconi company at the time and was responsible for much of the critical design of the high-power transmitter meant that, for me, the event had wider connotations. Fleming was England's first professor of electrical engineering and occupied the Pender Chair at UCL as well as being an active IEE member, so as both an IEE Past President and the current (eighth) Pender Professor I was delighted to participate in the celebration.
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