Podcast 1
Part of Artstation’s National Heritage Lottery Fund: interpretation of Flat Holm
by Glenn Davidson
On 29th March 2022, artist Glenn Davidson and Rob Owen met up with Glyn Jones. Over a lifetime, Glyn has amassed an amazing collection of articles, pictures, and objects, cataloguing the life and innovations of Guglielmo Marconi.
We asked Glyn to describe the scene as Marconi gathered, with others, on the foreshore at Lavernock Point in preparation to receive the world’s first telegraphy communication sent over water.
The message was to be transmitted by his team, led by Post Office engineer George Stephen Kemp waiting on Flat Holm Island.
Technical insights by Marconi from this experimental day helped improve the functionality and ensure the long-term development of telegraphy, of what were called Hertz Oscillations. These were named after the scientist Heinrich Hertz who discovered wave frequency.
We know these oscillations today as radio waves. The young Marconi also benefitted from the support of head Post Office engineer William Henry Preece.
This is a moment in Welsh history, when the world watched, a time that set on track the development of global wireless communications now central to our way of life. Here then, Glyn takes up the story of who was there and what happened, that day on the beach at Lavernock – 13th May 1897.
