At midday on December 12th, in the middle of a rainy ice storm, a kite could be seen swinging wildly in the strong winds on a 180-metre long wire (earlier attempts with rigid antennae had failed when the Newfoundland gales broke the rods!), while Guglielmo Marconi sat in his small room on Signal Hill. The son of an Irish mother and an Italian father, Marconi had been interested in electricity since his childhood. Though he hated school, he loved experimentation and invention, and had resolved, at age 19, to bring to the world an electromagnetic wave-based communications system. Now, this dream was about to be realized… or destroyed. What follows are his words:

"I placed a single ear-phone to my ear and started listening. The receiver on the table before me was very crude… I was at last on the point of putting the correctness of all my beliefs to the test. Suddenly, there sounded the sharp click of the 'tapper'… and I listented intently. Unmistakably, the three sharp clicks corresponding to three dots sounded in my ear."

Those three dots were Morse code for the letter 'S'-He had pulled it off.

A later, Marconi built a station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, and sent the first readable message across the Atlantic ocean, commencing a regular wireless service.