Marconi's first commercial message

On Monday, we ran an article called 'Marconi Clifden Celebrations'

The first paragraph of that item read:
On the 17th of October 1907 Guglielmo Marconi sent his first commercial message from the, then new, station at Clifden, Ireland.

Well, Peter Bentley G4BIM has e-mailed us with this rather interesting twist on that story. Peter writes:

News archives on the Isle of Wight confirm the following:

On the 3rd of June 1898 whilst carrying out experiments from the Royal Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight to a location in Bournemouth on mainland England, Marconi was visited by the scientist Lord Kelvin and his wife and Lord Tennyson.

During that meeting they asked Marconi to demonstrate that he could send messages to their friends by radio to Bournemouth across the Solent water and then onward to their final destination by the already established land line telegraph. Marconi agreed and charged them both 1 English shilling for each message.

This was the first time ever that a radio message had been sent and charged for, hence establishing The Isle of Wight as 'The Birthplace of Commercial Radio'

Some nine years later, perhaps it was the first commercial message Marconi sent from 'Clifden, Ireland', but not in fact his first 'Commercial Message'

Kind regards

Peter Bentley, G4BIM