The wireless first impacted on the lives of professionals - mainly those whose lives were connected with the sea. It only took a few interventions by Marconi's new device for its potential value and effects to become clear to the whole world.
The night of April 14, 1912, was eerily calm and still on the north Atlantic. There was no swell to show the huge iceberg in the path of the White Star Line's newest and most glamorous ocean liner RMS 'Titanic' as she sped her way to New York on her maiden voyage.
The 'Titanic' grazed the berg, opening a 300ft split in her side that spelt her doom - despite the watertight bulkheads supposed to make her unsinkable. There were lifeboats for less than half the 2,201 people on board - and many of these were launched half full.
The 'Titanic' was fitted with wireless and her Marconi operators started transmitting distress calls within 15 minutes of the collision. Their calls brought the liner 'Carpathian' to the scene around 4am - in time to pick up more than 700 people from the lifeboats.
It was the night wireless came of age.
Two of the leading heroes from the 'Titanic' were the doomed liner's Marconi radiotelegraph operators. Chief Wireless Officer John Philips and his junior assistant Harold Bride began transmitting distress signals from midnight on 14th April 1912.
At first they sent the CQD maritime distress code - but later added the new-style SOS, only recently introduced. As Bride wryly told Philips: 'It might be your last chance to send it.'
Philips and Bride stayed at their post until the power failed and their cabin was awash with water. At one stage, Bride used a club to stop a crazed crewman from stealing Philips' life jacket.
Bride managed to cling to one of the upturned collapsible lifeboats and survived. Philips was last seen heading to the stern and went down with the ship.
Wireless saved 711 lives that night and might have saved many more if the Marconi operator on the 'Californian' - lying just 10 miles away - had not gone to bed a few minutes before. After this disaster, ships had to keep a constant radio watch.
The East Goodwin lightship guards some of the most dangerous waters in the world - the shoals in the Dover Straits that have claimed the lives of countless sailors over the centuries.
Ironically, though, the lightship's place in history was secured when her own crew found themselves in danger.
On the evening of April 28, 1899, the freighter 'R.F. Matthews', outward bound from London in thick fog, rammed the lightship anchored ten miles offshore.
Fortunately, the lightship had an experimental Marconi wireless apparatus aboard.
Mr. Bullock, the assistant at the Marconi station at South Foreland lighthouse, was astonished to read the Morse inker tape message:
"Help, we have just been run into by the steamer 'R.F. Matthews' ... Our bows are damaged."
A lifeboat was swiftly launched to go to the assistance of the lightship. Fortunately, the damage was not serious and she remained on station. It was the first successful maritime distress call by wireless.
Gavey's ring transformer remains a bit of a mystery, like an object dug up in an archaeological excavation. Where it comes from and who built it are well known but the question remains what did it actually do?
The inventor himself held the position of Senior Post Office Engineer at the end of the 19th century. He was deeply interested in wireless technology and had experimented with the science long before Marconi arrived in England and began his work with the Post Office.
The most likely explanation is that this transformer was used during 1892 in William Preece's pioneering experiments with wireless between Lavernock Point and Flatholm Island, in the Bristol Channel. However, it would have been discarded alongside other equipment in favour of Marconi's superior wireless apparatus in later years.
