Just after noon on December 12th (the 12th hour of the 12th day of the 12th month) 1901 Guglielmo Marconi achieved the first successful trans-Atlantic radio broadcast on Signal Hill in St John's Newfoundland, then an independent colony of England.Yesterday afternoon a text and a phone call were made between two cell phones - one in Brandon Manitoba and one in St John's Newfoundland !! In today's technology saturated world, such a happening is pretty mundane, but had it NOT been for Marconi, today's radio, cell and now digital communication wouldn't be possible ...
I doubt Marconi would have cared that almost 107 years later two friends are able to chat half way across a continent ... I'm sure as he gazed across the cold grey Atlantic Ocean, Marconi's immediate thought was getting somewhere warm and cozy after his crazy experiment was completed ... it was sentiment shared by one half of the modern conversationists !!!
For the moment the mere thought of what is possible with modern technology is truly staggering ... and yet too many people approach such moments with fear ... a sentiment Marconi and his kind dared not entertain, otherwise we'd still be sitting in flickering candlelight reading our books huddling closer to the hearth for warmth ... Technology and change can be a marvelous thing !!
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