Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: February 28, 1999
Article Type: Journal

The BBC at Broadcasting House, Portland Place, Oxford Circus in London has opened a semi-permanent installation called "The BBC Experience." It begins with the dawn of radio and covers the succeeding 75 years to the interactive present, that is to say, directing a segment of a sitcom, doing sports commentary, creating sound effects.

The first room is called the Marconi room and shows the beginnings of radio, pioneered by the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, born 1874. "What a lot of ideas I have in my head," he said at age 10, and the small exhibition devoted to him and his inventions abundantly bears this out.

Inspired by science pioneers Hertz, Henry, Faraday, Maxwell and others, Marconi was by 1895 transmitting sound more than one mile and was on the verge of something major. Not receiving attention in his native Italy, he moved to England in 1896 (his mother was Scottish) and set up in Bristol and Chelmsford. He received his first radio patent that year. By the following year, he had so impressed Queen Victoria she had him establish a wireless link between the Isle of Wright, were she summered, and the Prince of Wales’ yacht off Cowes.

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