Modern Era · North America · Technology

1901

Marconi sends signal across Atlantic

December 12, 1901

On a wind-whipped Newfoundland hill, Guglielmo Marconi pressed a telephone receiver to his ear and heard three faint clicks sent from Cornwall, two thousand miles away. Experts had said radio waves would travel in straight lines and miss the curving earth. They were wrong. The world had begun to shrink.