Signor Marconi's Magic Box (41 page)

In 1894, when Guglielmo Marconi was twenty years old, there was no such thing as wireless; when he died in 1937, at the age of sixty-three, the first television broadcasts had been made, and a wireless signal had been sent around the world. Many of his obituaries compared him with Christopher Columbus: the explorer had dismissed the idea that the world was flat, and had the temerity to sail over the horizon; Marconi had ignored the theory that because the earth was round, wireless waves could not travel very far. By general agreement his most important technical achievement was the transatlantic transmission of the letter ‘S’ in Morse code from Poldhu to Newfoundland in December 1901, and the greatest value of his magic box - reference was still made to the miraculous nature of the invention - was the saving of lives at sea. Newspapers around the world recalled the triumph of the
Titanic
rescue.

Marconi’s funeral rites were long-drawn-out. There was a procession from the Farnese Palace in Rome to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where thousands filed past his open coffin as he lay in state. There was a further funeral ceremony in Bologna. The day after his death the
New York Times
devoted a whole page to his achievements, under a headline that ran across eight columns: ‘World-Wide Tribute is Paid to Marconi as the Benefactor of Many Millions’. American radio stations broadcast programmes recalling his achievements, and much was made of the fact that it was his invention that made it possible for an audience across the continent to listen in. Lee de Forest, who had finally made some money when his disputed patents were bought out by AT&T, and who had awarded himself the title ‘the Father of Radio’,
commended Marconi for his ‘daring genius’. He could rightly be called ‘the father of the wireless telegraph’, de Forest said magnanimously of his old rival, regretting that in all the years their paths had never crossed.

On 21 July, while remembrance services were held in London for Marconi, the General Post Office decreed that from 6 p.m. there should be a two-minute radio silence for all but distress calls. At Broadcasting House in London, the headquarters of the BBC, the flags flew at half-mast. In the United States, too, radio silence was observed as a mark of respect, and a special tribute was paid by David Sarnoff, President of RCA. An immigrant from Russia as a child, Sarnoff had worked for the American Marconi Company before the First World War, and had been one of the operators at the station in New York which received news of the loss of the
Titanic
in 1912. In Italy Mussolini ordered five minutes’ radio silence and the closing of shops and businesses.

Very little was said in the public tributes about Marconi’s private life, and the remark was often repeated that he was ‘wedded to wireless’. His first wife Beatrice joined the solemn crowds which had gone to see Marconi lying in state, and paid her last respects without anyone noticing her or knowing who she was. According to the newspapers Marconi had made a will in April 1935 which was just a page and a half long. His fortune reportedly amounted to five hundred million Italian lire, or £5 million
¹⁶
(some later estimates put the figure at £1.5 million), most of which was left to his youngest child, Elettra, with the proviso that she support her mother from the income from the estate. Much would go on death duties, but there was no doubt that Marconi had amassed a considerable fortune.

In the week following Marconi’s death the story of how the young Italian came to London with his mother in 1896 was told over and over again in the newspapers. The
Daily Telegraph
’s ‘Radio Correspondent’ L. Marsland Gander recalled the help Marconi
had been given by William Preece of the Post Office. It was a ‘lasting credit’ to Britain that it had shown such faith in a pioneer scientific effort when all Marconi had to offer was ‘a magic tin box on a pole’.

The speed with which Marconi developed his invention, and his sheer audacity, astounded his contemporaries. Preece gave him his first break, but failed to keep pace with his protégé. As Thomas Edison said: ‘Marconi delivers more than he promises.’ That was true of him during the most exciting, inventive years of his career, between 1896 and the outbreak of the First World War. But Marconi became a victim of his own success, neglecting his domestic life in favour of a single-minded and fanatical pursuit of invisible waves. The young man alone in the attic laboratory of the Villa Griffone ended up sailing the world’s oceans on his beloved white yacht, in whose wireless cabin he could escape from the pressures of fame and fortune. There is a sense in which Guglielmo Marconi was somehow always alone, mesmerised by his own magic, the workings of which he never really understood.

Admiralty (British): experiments with GM’s system denies help to Marconi Company in World War I

aerials
see
directional aerials

Alexandra, Queen of Edward VII

Allan Line (shipping)

alternators

American Institute of Electrical Engineers

American Marconi Company

American Telephone & Telegraph (AT & T)

American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company

America’s Cup (yacht races)

Ampthill, Emily

Andrews, Thomas

Anglo-American Cable

Company: completes first transatlantic cable

claims breach of monopoly against GM’s transatlantic signals

Appleton, Edward

Arco, Georg, Count von

Armstrong, Edwin

Armstrong, William

Athern, ‘Pop’

Atlantic Communications Company

Atlantic Ocean: steamships on GM aims to bridge with wireless signal signals first cross cables signals sent between Poldhu and Glace Bay GM publishes first shipboard regular newspaper (on
Lucania
) first spoken words transmitted across

‘audion’ receiver

Aurania
(ocean liner)

Baden-Powell, Baden: kites

Baker, Ray Standard

balloons
see
kites and balloons

Baltic
, SS

Barber, Commander Francis M.

Barnett, Canon Samuel Augustus

Barnum, Phineas T.

Barr, Captain (of
Carmania
)

barreter (receiving device)

Bathurst, Sir Richard Harvey

Belgian Marconi Wireless Company

Bell, Alexander Graham: invents telephone demonstrates to Queen Victoria in New York audience honouring GM wife’s deafness

Bennett, Gordon, Jr

Bennett, James Gordon, Sr

Berlin Radiotelegraphic Conference (1906)

Binns, Jack

Bismarck, Prince Otto von

Blok, Arthur

Boer War

Boissevain, Inez
see
Milholland, Inez

Bologna

Booth, William

Bose, Jagdish Chandra

Bottomley, John

Bournemouth

Bovill, W.B. Foster:
Hungary and the Hungarians

Boxall, Joseph

Boyle, Sir Cavendish

Bradfield, W.W.

Bradford, Admiral Royal Bird (USN)

Branly, Edouard

Brant Rock, Massachusetts

Braun, Karl Ferdinand

Brazil

Bride, Harold

British Broadcasting Company

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Brown, Harry

Brownsea Island, Dorset

Bruce
, SS

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

Budapest: early telephone broadcasting system

Burn, Ernesto

Butler, Frank

Café Martin, New York

Cahill, Thaddeus

Californian
, SS

Campania
, SS

Campbell-Swinton, A.A.

Canada: offers government support to GM

Cape Breton Island,

Newfoundland: Canadian government offers site on to GM

industrialisation wireless station on GM in larger transmitter built (‘Marconi Tower’) Beatrice visits successful transmissions from

Cape Cod, Massachusetts: wireless station established wireless mast collapses

Cape Race, Newfoundland

Carlo Alberto
(Italian cruiser)

Carlton Hotel, London

Carmania
, SS

Carpathia
, SS

carrier pigeons: in World War I,

Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

Caruso, Enrico

Century Illustrated, The
(monthly magazine)

Chelmsford, Essex

Chicago Telephone Company

Chiseltine, Captain

Clarke, Russell

Clerk Maxwell, James

Cleveland, Grover

Clifden, Ireland

Clifton, Leopold Agar-Robartes, 5th Viscount

Cobb Island, Potomac River, Maryland

coherers

Coltano, near Pisa, Italy

Columbia
(yacht)

Compagnie de Télégraphie Sans Fils, La (Brussels)

Consolidated Railway Telegraph Company

Cook, Ed

Cornwall

Cottam, Harold

Cragside (house), Northumberland

Crescent
(ship)

Crippen, Hawley Harvey

Crookes, William

Crookhaven, Ireland

Crosby, Oscar T.

crystal set receivers

Cuba

Cunard Line (shipping)

Cunard, Thomas

Daily Express
(Dublin)

Daily News
(St John’s)

Dam, H.J.W.

Darwin, Charles

Davy, Sir Humphry

daylight: effect on transmissions

Defence of the Realm Act (1914)

de Forest, Lee: developments in wireless activities in Russo-Japanese war tower and transmissions at St Louis World’s Fair kept from Fessenden’s work sets up stations in Florida and Cuba abandoned by White devises speech and music receiver (‘audion’) abandons rivalry with Marconi patents bought up obituary tribute to GM

De Forest Wireless Telegraphy Company

Dempsey, Jack

Denison, Thomas S.

Deutsche Betriebsgesellschaft für Drahtlöse Telegraphie (DEBEG)

Deutschland
(German liner)

Dew, Detective Inspector Walter

Dewey, Admiral George

directional aerials

Dolbear, Amos Emerson

Dominion Steel and Coal Company

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’

Dromoland Castle, Co. Clare

Ducretet, Eugène

Dumas, Alexandre

Duncan
, HMS

dynamite

Eaglehurst (house), Hampshire

earth: curvature

Edison, Thomas: Preece meets invents lightbulb uses induction method praises GM Fessenden works with initial scepticism over transatlantic signals electrical fantasies absent from New York welcome for GM partial deafness vacuum lightbulb effect and Puskas

Edward VII, King (
earlier
Prince of Wales): uses early wireless link on royal yacht succeeds to throne coronation postponed through illness and operation GM sends transatlantic greetings to

Edward VIII, King (
later
Duke of Windsor)

Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly

Eiffel, Gustave

Eiffel Tower, Paris: as wireless mast

Electric Club (USA)

Electric Girl Lighting Corporation

Electrical World
(US magazine)

Electrician, The
(magazine)

electricity: for lighting early utilisation of

Electro Importing Company, New York

electro-magnetism: travels in waves early experiments in

Elena, Queen of Victor Emmanuel III

Elettra
(steam yacht)

Elmore, Belle (Mrs H.H. Crippen)

Escoffier, Georges-Auguste

ether: as supposed transmission medium

Evening Herald
(St John’s, Newfoundland)

Evening Mail
(Dublin)

Ewing, Sir Alfred

Fahie, J.J.:
History of Wireless Telegraphy 1838 - 1899

Faraday, Michael

Fawley, Hampshire

Fayant, Frank

Ferrie, Captain Gustave

Fessenden, Helen

Fessenden, Reginald: as rival to GM at Cobb Island background and career aims to transmit speech Marriott uses system sues de Forest ambitions to send transatlantic signals builds transmitter at Brant Rock writes to Heaviside de Forest applies to join sound broadcast on Christmas Eve 1906 patents bought up

Field, Kate

Fitzgerald, George

Fitzsimmons, Bob

Flathold Island (Bristol Channel)

Fleming, Sir Ambrose: designs and operates Poldhu generator described as GM’s secretary believes in ether as waves medium lectures at Royal Institution devises valves based on vacuum lightbulbs recommends GM for Nobel Prize

Flood Page, Major Samuel
see
Page, Major Samuel Flood

Florida
, SS

Flying Huntress
(tug)

France: first cross-Channel wireless messages transmitted
see also
Paris

Franklin, Benjamin

Fraser, David
A Modern Campaign

Fraser, Tim

Frinton, Essex

Galvani, Luigi

Gander, L. Marsland

George V, King (
earlier
Prince of Wales)

Germany: develops Marconi’s method hostility to Marconi Company submarine cables cut in World War I code system in World War I messages monitored and intercepted in World War I