ggest merchant fleet.

The Italian government was not interested in young Marconi's work,
so after a family conference he was brought to London by his mother,
who had influential relatives there. Not only did they finance his
early experiments but they also put him in touch with the right sort
of people. One of these was Alan A. Campbell Swinton who became the
first President of the Radio Society of London (now the R.S.G.B.) many
years later, in 1913. Campbell Swinton introduced the young Italian
to William Preece, then Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Office.
Preece had already been investigating various methods of 'induction'
telegraphy.

In a book entitled Wireless Telegraphy published in 1908, William
J. White of the Engineer-in-Chief's department at the G.P.O. wrote,

"The work of Sir (then Mr) William Preece, important
though it was, did not attract the attention of the
public to the extent that might have been expected.
This was due to the fact that no sooner had he
demonstrated a method of wireless telegraphy which was
a commercial possibility than his system was superseded
by another, and a better one, brought to England by Mr
Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. The possibilities of Mr
Marconi's system were at once recognised by Mr William
Preece. The experience of the elder and the genius of
the younger man, who must be given the credit of having
devised the first practical system for wireless
telegraphy, combined to turn apparently disastrous
failures into success, and now (in 1908), wireless
telegraphy has become, in less than a decade, part and
parcel of commercial and national life."

The world's first patent for wireless telegraphy was awarded to
Marconi on the 2nd June 1896. In it he stated that "electrical action
can be transmitted through the earth, air or water, by means of
oscillations of high frequency." In the first public demonstration of
his equipment Marconi spanned the 365 metres between the G.P.O. and
Victoria street. Later, on Salisbury Plain, in March 1897, his
signals were detected over 7 kilometres away. On the 11th & 18th May
1897 messages were first exchanged over water. On the 27th of March
1899, during naval manoeuvres, Marconi bridged the English Channel for