Numbered Marconi Relics: Official Replicas

This section presents a selection of objects which arrived in Milan between 1955 and 1956, and which were referred to at the time as ‘Marconi relics’. Many of them feature numbered white celluloid labels that certify their belonging to a specific series of objects selected to tell the public about the origins of wireless communication ‘according to Marconi’. It is not known when the labels were applied, but some of these artefacts are recorded in the list of replicas created for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair as reported in the 1932 diary of George Kemp, Marconi’s assistant. Furthermore, identical labels are found on very similar objects, stored at the History of Science Museum in Oxford (where many artefacts were transferred from displays at the original Marconi Company headquarters in Chelmsford, Essex), and by the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where they arrived at the same time as the World’s Fair in 1933. It is interesting to note that numbers are found on artefacts given to MUST by diverse providers.