One cold December day in 1901, Guglielmo Marconi sat still in a room in
the Government building at Signal Hill, St. Johns, Newfoundland, with a
telephone receiver at his ear and his eye on the clock that ticked
loudly nearby. Overhead flew his kite bearing his receiving-wire. It was
12:30 o'clock on the American side of the ocean, and Marconi had ordered
his operator in far-off Poldhu, two thousand watery miles away, to begin
signalling the letter "S"--three dots of the Morse code, three flashes
of the bluish sparks--at that corresponding hour. For six years he had
been looking forward to and working for that moment--the final test of
all his effort and the beginning of a new triumph. He sat waiting to
hear three small sounds, the br-br-br of the Morse code "S," humming on
the diaphragm of his receiver--the signature of the ether waves that had
travelled two thousand miles to his listening ear. As the hands of the
clock, whose ticking alone broke the stillness of the room, reached
thirty minutes past twelve, the receiver at the inventor's ear began to
hum, br-br-br, as distinctly as the sharp rap of a pencil on a
table--the unmistakable note of the ether vibrations sounded in the
telephone receiver. The telephone receiver was used instead of the usual
recorder on account of its superior sensitiveness.

Transatlantic wireless telegraphy was an accomplished fact.

Though many doubted that an actual signal had been sent across the
Atlantic, the scientists of both continents, almost without exception,
accepted Marconi's statement. The sending of the transatlantic signal,
the spanning of the wide ocean with translatable vibrations, was a great
achievement, but the young Italian bore his honours modestly, and
immediately went to work to perfect his system.