On December 12, 1901, on a wind-whipped hill in St. John's, Newfoundland, a 27-year-old Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi held a small wooden earpiece tight against his head. A kite was flying 500 feet above him, holding up a long wire antenna. Thousands of miles away, across the freezing Atlantic Ocean in Cornwall, England, his team was tapping out three short clicks in Morse code - dot dot dot, the letter S. Marconi waited. Then, faintly through the static, he heard it. Click. Click. Click.
Scientists at the time said it was impossible. They believed radio waves traveled in straight lines, so they could not bend around the curved Earth. A signal from England should fly off into outer space, not curve down to Canada. But Marconi did not listen. He had been tinkering with wireless waves since he was a teenager experimenting in his parents' attic in Italy. He sent his first signal across a room, then across a field, then across the English Channel. Now he was reaching across an entire ocean.
It turned out the radio waves were bouncing off a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, hopping along the planet like skipping stones. Marconi's discovery launched the wireless age. Soon ships at sea could call for help - the famous SOS distress signals from the Titanic in 1912 were sent on Marconi equipment, saving more than 700 lives. Radio, then television, then Wi-Fi, then cell phones all traced back to a faint triple click heard on a Newfoundland hill.
