Post office officials examining Marconi's apparatus when in 1897 he successfully communicated by wireless across the Bristol Channel, England. This was the first time a wireless transmission was conducted across water. The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company was a pioneer of wireless long distance communication and mass media broadcasting, eventually becoming one of the UKs most successful manufacturing companies. The company was founded by the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 after the granting of a British patent for wireless in March of that year. The company opened the world's first radio factory on Hall Street in Chelmsford in 1898 and was responsible for some of the most important advances in radio and television.