Thunderstruck (35 page)

R
ATS

T
HE FADING CREDIBILITY OF HIS COMPANY
prompted Marconi to deploy Ambrose Fleming yet again, this time for a lecture on tuning and long-range wireless at the Royal Institution, on June 4, 1903. Fleming arranged to have Marconi send a wireless message from Poldhu to a receiver installed at the institution for the lecture, as a means of providing a vivid demonstration of long-range wireless. The recipient was to be James Dewar, director of the Royal Institution’s Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory. Dewar was best known for his ability to chill things, in particular his successful effort in 1898 to liquefy hydrogen, which in turn had led a German technician to invent the Thermos bottle.

The timing was tricky. The message was to arrive in the closing moments of Fleming’s lecture. It was pure theater, a variety show complete with a turn of magic, and if everything had gone according to plan, it might indeed have done much to help Marconi regain some of his lost credibility.

F
LEMING BEGAN HIS LECTURE
promptly at five o’clock. As always, every seat was taken. He spoke with confidence and flair, and the audience responded with murmurs of approval. One of his assistants, P. J. Woodward, took up position by the receiver and prepared to switch on the Morse inker to record Marconi’s expected message to Dewar. But as the moment approached, something peculiar happened.

Another assistant, Arthur Blok, heard an odd ticking in the arc lamp inside the large brass “projection lantern” in the hall. As he listened, he realized the ticking was not simply a random distortion. The electric arc within the projector was acting as a crude receiver and had begun picking up what seemed to be deliberate transmissions. At first he assumed that Marconi’s men in Chelmsford “were doing some last-minute tuning-up.”

Fleming did not notice. During his tenure with the Marconi company he had become increasingly hard of hearing. The audience too seemed unaware.

Blok was experienced in sending and receiving Morse code. The clicking in the lantern was indeed spelling out a word—a word that no one in Chelmsford would dare have sent, even as a test. Yet there it was, a single word:

“Rats.”

As soon as Blok recognized this, “the matter took on a new aspect. And when this word was repeated, suspicion gave place to fear.”

A few years earlier the expression “rats” had acquired a new and non-zoological meaning. During one action of the Boer War, British troops had used light signals sent by heliograph to ask the opposing Boer forces what they thought of the British artillery shells then raining down on their position. The Boers answered, “Rats,” and the word promptly entered common usage in Britain as a term that connoted “hubris” or “arrogance.”

As the time set for Marconi’s final message neared, the assistant at the receiver turned on the Morse inker, and immediately pale blue dots and dashes began appearing on the ribbon of paper that unspooled from the inker. A new word came across:

There

Blok alternately kept an eye on the clock and on the tape jolting from the inker.

was

a

young

fellow

from Italy

Blok was stunned. “There was but a short time to go,” he said, “and the ‘rats’ on the coiling paper tape unbelievably gave place to a fantastic doggerel”:

There was a young fellow from Italy

Who diddled the public quite prettily

The clicking paused, then resumed. Helpless, Blok and his colleague could only listen and watch.

Now entertain conjecture of a time

When creeping murmur and the poring dark

Fills the wide vessel of the Universe.

From camp to camp through the foul womb of night

The hum of either army stilly sounds,

That the fix’d sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other’s watch

Any well-schooled adult of the time, meaning almost everyone in the audience, would have recognized these lines as coming from Shakespeare’s
Henry V.

It was like being at a séance, that mix of dread and fascination as the planchette pointed to letters on the rim of an Ouija board. “Evidently something had gone wrong,” Blok wrote. “Was it practical joke or were they drunk at Chelmsford? Or was it even scientific sabotage? Fleming’s deafness kept him in merciful oblivion and he calmly lectured on and on. And the hands of the clock, with equal detachment, also moved on, while I, with a furiously divided attention, glanced around the audience to see if anybody else had noticed these astonishing messages.”

Another pause, then came an excerpt from
The Merchant of Venice.
Shylock:

I have possessed your grace of what I purpose

And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn

To have the due and forfeit of my bond.

Still oblivious, Fleming talked on. Marconi’s message from Poldhu, via Chelmsford, would arrive at any moment. Blok erased all anxiety from his own expression and scanned the audience for indications that the interloping signals had been detected. At first, to his great relief, he found none. The audience had entered the oblivion of complete engagement—“a testimony to the spell of Fleming’s lecture.” But then his gaze came to rest on “a face of supernatural innocence.” He knew the man, Dr. Horace Manders; he knew him also to be a close associate of Nevil Maskelyne. In that instant, Blok understood what had happened but allowed no change in his own expression.

“By a margin of seconds before the appointed Chelmsford moment, the vagrant signals ceased and with such
sang froid
as I could muster I tore off the tape with this preposterous dots and dashes, rolled it up, and with a pretence of throwing it away, I put it in my pocket.”

But the receiver clicked back to life. Was this more Shakespeare, more doggerel, or something worse? The tape unspooled. With scientific detachment, Blok and his colleague read the first blue marks.

The first letters across were
PD,
the call sign for Poldhu. Marconi’s message was coming through. Dewar in his message to Poldhu earlier in the day had asked Marconi about the status of transatlantic communications. Now, as expected, Marconi was providing his answer.

To Prof. Dewar. To President Royal Society and yourself Thanks for kind message. Communication from Canada was re-established May 23.—Marconi.

Fleming ended his lecture. The audience erupted with what Blok described as “unsuspecting applause.” Fleming beamed. Dewar shook his hand. Other members did likewise and congratulated him on another fine performance, while marveling at how well he orchestrated the demonstration. To the audience, it seemed a testament to the increasing reliability and sophistication of Marconi’s technology. Blok knew otherwise: In the end the lecture’s success had hinged on something far outside the control of Marconi and his supposed new ability to avoid interference and interception. Had the pirate signals continued, Marconi’s message would have come through grossly distorted or not at all, at great cost to the reputations of both Marconi and Fleming. Smug mockery would have filled the pages of
The Electrician.

After the handshaking and congratulations had subsided, someone, perhaps Blok or Woodward, told Fleming what had occurred and about the presence in the audience of Maskelyne’s associate, Dr. Manders. Fleming was outraged. To attempt to disrupt a lecture at the Royal Institution was tantamount to thrusting a shovel into the grave of Faraday. But the affair also inflicted a more personal wound. A man of brittle and inflated dignity, Fleming was embarrassed on his own behalf, even though no one in the audience other than his assistants and Dr. Manders had appeared to notice the intrusion.

All night Fleming steamed.

M
ASKELYNE WAITED, DISAPPOINTED.

He was indeed the pirate behind the wireless raid on Fleming’s lecture; in fact, he had hoped his intrusion would cause an immediate uproar of satisfying proportions. As he confessed later, “The interference was purposely arranged so as to draw Professor Fleming into some admission that our messages had reached the room.”

But Marconi’s men had been too cool and quick; also, Maskelyne had not appreciated the extent of Fleming’s loss of hearing. But he guessed that Fleming’s assistants eventually would tell him of the intrusion. He understood well the inner character of his prey, his need for approval and respect. Fleming could not help but respond.

The trap was well set. An immediate outcry would have been far more satisfying, but Maskelyne believed he would not have to wait long for Fleming himself to make the phantom signals public, at which point Maskelyne intended to make both Marconi and Fleming squirm.

And this would be satisfying indeed.

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE LECTURE,
Fleming wrote a letter about it to Marconi. “Everything went off well,” he began, but then added: “There was however a dastardly attempt to jamb us; though where it came from I cannot say. I was told that Maskelyne’s assistant was at the lecture and sat near the receiver.”

In a second letter soon afterward Fleming told Marconi that Dewar “thinks I ought to expose it. As it was a purely scientific experiment for the benefit of the R.I. it was a ruffianly act to attempt to upset it, and quite outside the ‘rules of the game.’ If the enemy will try that on at the R.I. they will stick at nothing and it might be well to let them know.”

Marconi’s responses to these letters are lost to history, but if he or anyone else counseled Fleming as to the benefits of letting dogs sleep, the advice went unheeded.

On June 11, 1903, in a letter published by
The Times,
Fleming first reminded readers of his lecture at the Royal Institution and his demonstration, then wrote: “I should like to mention that a deliberate attempt was made by some person outside to wreck the exhibition of this remarkable feat. I need not go into details; but I have evidence that it was the work of a skilled telegraphist and of some one acquainted with the working of wireless telegraphy, whilst at the same time animated by ill-feelings towards the distinguished inventor whose name is always popularly and rightly connected with this invention.