Collection APL 793 - Canadian Marconi Company collection

Originally founded as The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of Canada in 1902, the company became known as Canadian Marconi Company in 1925, then changed to BAE Systems Canada Inc. in 2000 and in April of 2001 it became CMC Electronics Inc.
Marconi, Guglielmo, for whom the Canadian Marconi Company was named, (1874-1937) was born in Bologna, Italy, to Giuseppe and Annie (Jameson) Marconi. He married Beatrice O'Brien and later Cristina Bezzi-Scali. Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909 as a result of experiments in wireless telegraphy begun in the 1890s and culminating in 1901 with the reception of the first transatlantic transmission at Signal Hill, St. John's. Marconi first decided to attempt two-way wireless communication across the Atlantic from Poldhu, Cornwall to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. When the Poldhu antenna became damaged and the Cape Cod antenna was destroyed in a storm, Marconi changed his North American location to St. John's because of its closeness to the weakened Poldhu transmitter. On December 9,1901 Marconi began setting up a receiving station in an old military barracks on Signal Hill. On December 14, Marconi received the first transatlantic signal, the letter "S"(Morse code: ...) tapped out at his 25,000 Watt English station, a distance of 1,800 miles. Then, on January 18, 1903, he transmitted a 48-word message from Cape Cod to England, and promptly received a reply. It was the first two-way transoceanic communication, and the first wireless telegram between America and Europe, a distance of some 3,000 miles. Marconi's system was soon adopted by the British and Italian vies for ship-to-shore communications, and by 1907 had been so much improved that transatlantic wireless telegraph service was established for public use. Marconi accepted a Canadian government grant to build the transatlantic terminal at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. Another station was built at Clifton, Ireland, and in October 1907 commercial transatlantic communication was begun. In 1905 Newfoundland received a wireless station installed by Marconi himself at Cape Race, then under Canadian jurisdiction. Marconi continued perfecting his inventions and developing new wireless technology such as the short-wave transmitter/receiver and navigational direction finding equipment, as well as doing preliminary work on radar. Marconi died in Italy on July 20, 1937.