5 April 2012Last updated at 07:45

Titanic anniversary: How radio ham Artie Moore heard SOS

An exhibition opens in Caerphilly county this weekend in honour of an amateur radio enthusiast who picked up the distress signal from the stricken Titanic after it hit an iceberg and sank 100 years ago this month. Arthur 'Artie' Moore (pictured), from Gelligroes Mill, near Pontllanfraith, and Richard Jenkins experimented with wireless technology in the early 1900s at Mr Moore's makeshift radio workshop.

Mr Moore first made front page news in 1911 by picking up a message of Italy's declaration of war on Libya

Titanic leaving Belfast (Copyright: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)

On 15 April 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic Ocean. This photographs shows the ship leaving Belfast, where it was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard.

Artie Moore's transmission equipment (Copyright: Glyn Jones)

Artie Moore was one of the first people in the outside world to learn of the ship's fate when he picked up its distress signal on his equipment, shown here in a 1911 photograph by the Daily Sketch newspaper. The pictures were saved from destruction by Barry Radio Society chairman Glyn Jones.

The exhibition at the Winding House Museum in New Tredegar, which opens on Friday, focuses on the story of Mr Moore, as well as looking at life in this corner of south Wales in the early 1900s

Interior of Titanic's first class - veranda cafe (Copyright: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)

The exhibition, which runs every Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 17:00 BST until the end of the year, is entitled The Titanic, the Mill and the Signal: Artie Moore and Titanic's SOS. This photograph shows the Titanic's veranda cafe in first class.

Gelligroes Mill is now a candlemaking workshop. On 14 April, it will be open to the public from 10:00 to 16:00 BST when Blackwood and District Amateur Radio Society will commemorate Mr Moore receiving the Titanic's distress signal.

Artie Moore's obituary in the Merthyr Express

Mr Moore's experiments continued after 1912 and, in 1932, he patented an early version of the sonar system of measuring ocean depths. He eventually died in 1949

Wales

Titanic anniversary: How radio ham Artie Moore heard SOS

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