Whilst many will have heard of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, relatively few will have heard of the name Frederick Sammis. For those familiar with the story of the Titanic disaster and the inquiries which followed, Frederick Sammis is probably best remembered for the role he played in helping to arrange the sale of surviving wireless operator Harold Bride's exclusive story to the New York Times.
Mr Patrick O’Grady, chief clerk at the County Council offices, was an extraordinary sort of man. He always arrived in time for work, greeted his secretary with a handshake and sometimes wrote articles for the local newspapers. The visitors in his waiting room began arriving to see him in the morning. Some came on important matters while others came about extra little pieces of land or using his influence with the local T.D. to get a son or daughter, who had run foul of the law, out of trouble.
At 7pm on Valentine’s Day February 14th 1922, Britain’s first scheduled radio station 2MT first began broadcasting every Tuesday night from the small Essex town of Writtle. The station was the experimenter arm of the Marconi Company with Captain Peter Eckersley in charge. Each night the station would go on air at 7pm with Marconi’s publicity man in London, Arthur Burrows, despatching gramophone records to be played and artistes to perform live.
