Signor Marconi’s Magic Box by Gavin Weightman, HarperCollins, £15.99, ISBN 0007130058 Reviewed by Antony Anderson
IN JUNE 1903, shortly after the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi had successfully demonstrated two-way transatlantic wireless communication, his chief technical expert, Ambrose Fleming, was lecturing at the Royal Institution in London. A ticker-tape machine had been set up to receive a Morse signal relayed from Poldhu in Cornwall, and Fleming was explaining how wireless waves could be tuned to avoid interference when the arc lamp in the projection lantern began to tick in a regular manner and the ticker-tape machine began to spew out a printed message.
Fleming’s assistant realised the ticking arc was spelling out “rats” in Morse twice, followed by: “There was a young fellow of Italy, Who diddled the public prettily”. Neither Fleming, who was deaf, nor his audience noticed, and the lecture was acclaimed as a great success in the technical press. Nevil Maskelyne, an aspiring rival of Marconi, later confessed to having transmitted the messages from the Egyptian Hall, a nearby museum, to show that the Marconi system was not immune to interference. Fleming was furious.
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This is one of several delightful anecdotes that enliven Signor Marconi’s Magic Box, the story of the inventor of the first practical long-range wireless system. Marconi was not a stereotypical inventor. He was never penniless: his Italian father initially paid his bills, and he enjoyed the unstinting support of his mother Annie, daughter of Andrew Jameson, the wealthy distiller of Irish whiskey. She gave him an entrée into English society when he arrived in Britain at the age of 22, and introduced him to a useful contact, William Preece, chief engineer of the Post Office.
Gavin Weightman brings alive the excitement and uncertainty of the early wireless experiments. Transmitting signals across the Atlantic required enormous aerials, easily blown down by gales, and powerful spark transmitters. Some stations, including Poldhu, were set up near hotels, selected for their position near the sea and the availability of accommodation for Marconi and his staff.
Hotel guests seem to have accepted the spectacular electrical activity without question. “The eerie and alarming appearance of that spark…is something not to be forgotten. When the door of the enclosure was opened, the roar of the discharge could be heard for miles along the coast…every metal gutter, drainpipe or other object about the sheds on the site resonated freely and there was a minor chorus of ticks and flashes in consonance with the discharge…”
Weightman’s book cannot fail to spark the imagination of anyone wishing to comprehend the magnitude of the revolution brought about by wireless in the early 20th century. It is an excellent read and draws upon some wonderful sources: what a pity he did not list his references.