South Tyneside Amateur Radio Society (Stars) has set up its equipment at Souter Lighthouse in Whitburn to celebrate Guglielmo Marconi's invention of the first radio, in 1897.

Each year, amateur radio clubs from around the world gather on the Saturday nearest his birthday – known as International Marconi Day – to talk to other radio hams about the Italian's creation, and also celebrate the first signal beamed across the Atlantic Ocean.

Stars will set up the wireless at the iconic lighthouse, and set out to contact 20 other radios around the world.

Deputy chairman George Scott, from Jarrow, said: "It's really just a good chance to talk to as many other radios as you can, and also to give our thanks to the inventor.

"Marconi was the first one to send a signal across the Atlantic, and as a tribute, we want to get in touch with as many people around the world on his birthday as we can.

"Last year we managed to get in touch with a few ships and even a submarine, and we hope to do the same this year."

The first station to make contact with 20 other radios today will win the Marconi Radio Award, which will be named in one of the industry's leading publications, Radio Magazine.

Stars, which has 40 members, was based at a hut in the grounds of the Grey Horse pub in East Boldon, before moving to St Peter's Church Hall in Jarrow earlier this year.

Marconi, born on April 25, 1874, won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909 for his groundbreaking discovery into the world of the wireless system, and set up a high-powered radio station in Cornwall in 1901.