Marconi Bench

Marconi Bench ... Telegraph Hill, S.F.

At the foot of Pioneer Park, by 260 Lombard (x Kearny), across from the Lombard steps leading to Coit Tower, is this stone bench commemorating Guglielmo Marconi. Some archive photos from a time when this was just a windswept hill are here. The plaque reads 'Fulgura Praevertens Vacuam Vox Permeat Aethram' (Outstripping the lighting, the voice races through the clear, empty sky.) Erected by popular subscription, tended by the Call - Bulletin, it provides a nice sit-down before the last set of steps to the tower.

The time I spent looking for decent links lead to all sorts of trivia. In 1905 The De Forest Wireless and Telegraph Company established its KPH Radio station in San Francisco and began broadcasting from the Palace Hotel. It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. In 1912 Marconi bought the station and chose Bolinas for its transmitter. Marconi stayed at 1198 Fulton (the Westerfield House) later home to Bobbie Beausoleil (Manson), Kenneth Anger (Lucifer Rising) and the commune, Calliope (Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). Much of Marconi's important work was accomplished in the immediate Bay Area, so the city of San Francisco granted him honorary citizenship in 1933 during a world tour, at a reception aboard the Chichibu Maru, docked on the embarcadero. And....1896 Mar 3, Snow fell in SF and accumulated to 1.0 inch. (it was such a sunny day, I couldn't let that one go by.)