THE simple pleasure of listening to the radio is something we all take for granted.
On long car journeys it can shore the driver against cries of "Are we there yet?" and provides many of us with breaking news at the crack of dawn.
It is thanks to the Italian "father of wireless", Guglielmo Marconi, who had his most famous factory built in New Street by a 500-strong workforce in 1912.
But now most of the 70,000sq ft factory is nothing more than a pile of rubble as Bellway Homes knocks it down to build 437 new homes.
Matt Oates, senior technical manager at Bellway Homes, said: "We started demolition about six months ago. We are probably about five weeks away from completing the demolition.
"It had been left in a very sorry state by the previous owners; it was a challenge with the various different buildings."
Bellway wants to build hundreds of homes, of which more than a third will be classed as affordable, and will turn the iconic building into its Essex HQ.
The water tower and power house, where all the generators were kept, will also remain within the development.
The New Street factory was the second premises for Marconi's company – the first was a former silk factory in Hall Street, which was quickly overwhelmed by the development of technology and amount of business.
The new factory, which was built in just 17 weeks, employed large numbers of men and women in the production of wireless transmitters.
In April 1912, the Titanic used Marconi transmitters to summon help. During the First World War they were used to intercept German radio transmissions. And during the Second World War, the company played a crucial role in the development of radar.
But the company helped shape British society in peacetime as well – engineers at the New Street factory experimented with voice transmissions, entertaining the public for the first time in 1920 with the voice of singer Dame Nellie Melba.
The company went one step further in 1936 as the first television broadcasts by the BBC from Alexandra Palace used Marconi equipment – and the firm pioneered the first use of colour television in a medical operating theatre at St John's Hospital in 1958.
Peter Turrall, ex-director of publicity and chairman of the Marconi Veteran's Association, said: "It's very sad because most of the buildings that have been demolished are the offices where all the former Marconi employees would have worked.
"But at least Bellway is preserving the front of the building, which has a preservation order that I helped put in place more than 20 years ago.
"We're in discussion with Bellway to make sure the Marconi Veterans have some say in what happens to the front building and hope we may be able to have somewhere inside to keep some of the artefacts of the company so the history will not be forgotten."
