Major new Marconi exhibition opens in Oxford

Marconi's grandson Guglielmo and his daughter Princess Elettra will attend the opening of a major new Marconi exhibition at the Museum of History of Science in Oxford on 24 April.

The exhibition – called Wireless World:  Marconi and the making of radio – covers the history of radio from Marconi's early demonstrations in the 1880s to the beginning of regular public broadcasts in the 1920s.

Original equipment and documents from those pioneering days of radio will be on display, including apparatus from Marconi's very first demonstrations, Marconigram messages sent by the stricken Titanic just before it sank and the microphone used by Nellie Melba to deliver the first ever life public entertainment broadcast on 15 June 1920.

The exhibition will be run from 25 April to 1 October. For further details, contact Jim Bennett at e-mail address jim.bennett@<no spam>mhs.ox.ac.uk .

To mark the opening of the exhibition, the Oxford and District Amateur Radio Society will operate special event station GB4MHS from the museum on 25 to 29 April.

The club will operate from 1100 to 1500UTC on 2m, 20m, 40m and 80m.