Guglielmo Marconi, at 27, accomplished the first transoceanic radiocommunication on December 12, 1901. Persy Wright Paget received three short signals corresponding to the Morse code letter S - the first of the word "Sos" - launched from Poldhu, in Cornwall, in the southwest of England, at 12.30 (with a transmitter 100 times more powerful than those then existing, equal to 15 kw) on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, over 3 thousand kilometers away, on a hill near the Canadian port of St. John of Newfoundland, in Canada. Performing a feat that scientists believed was impossible. The event was lauded by scientists and innovators (including Thomas A. Edison), the press, and the general public. Marconi also received honors and awards over the years (including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909, 16 honorary degrees including those of Oxford and Cambridge, the appointment as honorary member of the main European and American academies and scientific institutes and in 1914, at only 40 years old, the appointment of senator of the Kingdom of Italy, in the privileged category of the "meritorious of the Fatherland"). However, he was first disliked by scientists and technologists, who dared to accuse him of ignorance.
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