Thunderstruck

“DAMN THE SUN!”

ON HIS WAY BACK TO LONDON, with a formal offer from Canada in hand, Marconi stopped off in New York and attended a January 13, 1902, banquet of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, where he was to be the guest of honor. Unknown to him, the affair nearly proved to be a disaster.

At first a number of prominent scientists declined to attend, expressing doubt as to whether Marconi really had sent signals across the Atlantic, but by the night of January 13 the institute’s leaders had managed to recruit a ballroom full of believers. They held an elaborate banquet. Black signs at three points in the room bore the names Marconi, Poldhu, and St. John’s, with strings of lamps hung between them. At intervals, the lamps flashed three dots. The menus were printed with ink made from Italian olive oil, and the soup for the evening was “Potage Electrolytique.” Bowls of sorbet emerged, decorated with telegraph poles and wireless masts.

Thomas Edison had been invited but could not attend. Instead he sent a telegram, which the master of ceremonies read aloud. Clearly Edison had changed his mind and now accepted Marconi’s claims. His telegram read, “I am sorry that I am prevented from attending your dinner tonight especially as I should like to pay my respects to Marconi, the young man who had the monumental audacity to attempt and succeed in jumping an electric wave clear across the Atlantic Ocean.”

Cheers and applause rose from the audience. For Marconi, it was a rare moment of adulation, but he understood that his achievement in Newfoundland, though striking, was only the beginning of a long struggle. What he did not recognize was the extent to which the applause masked a deep and pervasive skepticism toward him and his claims of success.

IN LONDON AMBROSE Fleming sulked. After learning of remarks Marconi had made in Canada and at the banquet, he felt doubly hurt. He believed that he deserved a big share of the credit for Marconi’s success, yet when the great moment had arrived, he had been frozen out. In his own account of events, Fleming wrote that during Marconi’s celebratory lunch with the governor of Newfoundland, Marconi had “made no frank acknowledgement…of the names of those who had assisted him but spoke continuously of ‘my system’ and ‘my work.’” At the New York banquet, Fleming wrote, Marconi “pursued the same policy.”

Josephine Holman too grew disenchanted. If she had expected to be the center of Marconi’s attention during his stay in New York, she now found that she was mistaken. Marconi attended luncheons and dinners and kept busy in between by overseeing the installation of wireless aboard the SS Philadelphia, the ship that would take him and Kemp back home.

Josephine conceded defeat. On January 21, 1902, her mother, Mrs. H.B. Holman, issued an announcement to the press: Her daughter had asked Marconi to release her from the engagement, and Marconi had done so.

It made the front page of the Indianapolis News in an article just three paragraphs long under the headline, “ENGAGEMENT IS BROKEN.” The item offered few details.

Later, a News reporter managed to catch up with Marconi at the Hoffman House in New York and asked if he had anything more to say.

“No, except that I am sorry.”

The reporter asked, “Have your feelings in any way changed toward Miss Holman?”

“I don’t think I can answer that—just say simply, please, that I am sorry.”

The reporter probed further: “Had your experiments reached the point where you were at liberty to be married?”

“Well, hardly,” Marconi said, “but if other things had not occurred things might have been arranged.” He continued: “I have not one word of criticism to make on Miss Holman’s notion. She concluded, I suppose, that her future happiness did not rest in my keeping, and the letter of request followed. I had reason to believe that our relations were quite happy and mutual until lately, and it is only natural that I should feel a little depressed at the result.”

He added a tincture of mystery when he told another reporter that while delays in his work had indeed been a factor, “there was also a very delicate question involved.” He gave no further explanation.

Miss Holman said little but did tell one newspaper, “There have been disasters on both sides.” She was not referring to the collapse of the masts at Poldhu and South Wellfleet.

By the end of the day, Wednesday, January 22, 1902, as gossip about the breakup became the opening course at dinner tables in Indianapolis, New York, and London, both Marconi and Holman were at sea, Marconi aboard the Philadelphia bound for Southampton, Holman aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, one of the few German liners afloat that was equipped with her ex-lover’s apparatus.

Holman sought escape to the Continent, hoping that travel would prove a salve for her broken heart; Marconi got back to work.

Loath to let a day pass without further experimentation, Marconi installed himself in the Philadelphia’s wireless cabin. As the liner approached the English coast, he made contact with Poldhu and set a new record for ship-to-shore communications: 150 miles.

Despite his failed romance, Marconi arrived in London feeling more confident than he had in a long time—a good thing, for he faced a year that would prove especially trying and raise a grave new threat from Germany.

IN LONDON MARCONI explained the details of the new Canadian arrangement to his board of directors. Much to the directors’ delight, Canada had agreed to pay for the construction of the Nova Scotia station. Less delightful was Marconi’s promise to provide transatlantic wireless service for 60 percent less than the rate charged by the cable companies, a maximum of ten cents a word. This was a bold commitment, given that all Marconi had sent thus far was a couple of dozen three-dot signals. Nonetheless, the board gave its approval.

Next Marconi addressed the annual meeting of his company’s shareholders and for the first time in public launched into a direct attack against William Preece and Oliver Lodge and their much-publicized harping about flaws in his system. A man more able to sense the subtler bounds of accepted scientific behavior might have omitted this attack or at least phrased it differently, with the kind of oblique but slashing wit at which British parliamentarians seemed so adept, but Marconi was about to cross a dangerous invisible line—especially in touching on that most sensitive of subjects, Lodge’s interest in ghosts.

First Marconi took on Preece. “Sir William Preece is, I believe, a gentleman with various claims to scientific distinction; but, whatever his attainments in other walks of science, I regret to say that the most careful examination reveals absolutely no testimonial to his competency for this most recent of his undertakings. Such knowledge of my work as he may possess is at least three years old—a very long period, I would remind you, in the brief history of my system…. Of the conditions under which the system is now worked Sir William Preece is, in fact, wholly ignorant.”

Now he addressed Lodge’s criticisms. “I regret to say that, distinguished as Dr. Lodge may be as a professor of physics or as a student of psychical phenomena, the same statement applies also in his case, so far as my present system or wireless telegraphy is concerned.”

Marconi declared that his tuning technology allowed him to send messages across the Atlantic “without interfering with, or, under ordinary conditions, being interfered with, by any ship working its own wireless installations.” He then challenged Preece and Lodge to attempt to interfere with his transmissions and even offered them the use of his own stations for the experiment.

His shareholders applauded, but to others outside the company, his remarks, published in the press, smacked of impudence and mockery.

The Westminster Gazette suggested that “Signor Marconi would have done better if he had spared his sneers at the capacity of the more important of his critics…. Bitter retorts and jeers at the intelligence of opponents are not the marks of the scientific spirit. There would seem to be no a priori reason why the student of psychic phenomena should not be permitted to express an opinion upon the future of wireless telegraphy.”

The Electrical Times condemned Marconi for speaking “with scarcely veiled contempt” of Lodge and Preece. “Had it not been for the scientific work of the former it is doubtful whether Mr. Marconi would have had any wireless telegraphy to boast about, while to the latter he is indebted for help and encouragement when he first came to England…. But, apart from that, the tone Mr. Marconi adopts is hardly decent in so young a man towards one so much his senior and of so high a standing in the engineering and scientific world.”

The journal further charged that if no one knew much about the current state of Marconi’s technology, it was Marconi’s own fault. “If Mr. Marconi would but describe his methods and apparatus openly and fully, as scientific men are accustomed to do, he would find no lack of sympathy and appreciation.”

Far from ending here, the battle was about to get a lot uglier.

TWO DAYS LATER, on Saturday, February 22, 1902, Marconi once again boarded the Philadelphia. The main purpose of this voyage was to return to Canada to close the agreement with the government, but he also saw an opportunity to counter the skepticism confronting his Newfoundland achievement. He installed a new and taller antenna on the Philadelphia to attempt to increase the range at which signals could be received from Poldhu, and invited the ship’s captain, A. R. Mills, to witness the tests. He abandoned the telephone receiver he had used in Newfoundland and attached his usual Morse inker, so that at least there would be a physical record of whatever signals came through.

Everyone by now accepted that Marconi’s system worked well over short distances, so the first messages exchanged with his shore stations caused little stir. It was on the morning of the second day, when the ship was precisely 464.5 miles from Poldhu, that things got interesting.

The equipment snapped to life. The receiver captured the message, “All in order. V.E.,” with V.E. being code for “Do you understand?”

Messages and S’s continued to arrive as per Marconi’s schedule.

At 1,032.3 miles the ship received this message: “Thanks for telegram. Hope all are still well. Good luck.”

Five hundred miles later the last message containing complete words arrived. “All in order. Do you understand?” But even at 2,099 miles from Poldhu the ship’s receiver continued to pick up distinct three-dot patterns.

Captain Mills saw the blue dots as they emerged from the inker. Marconi turned to him. “Is that proof enough, Captain?”

It was. The captain agreed to stand witness and signed the tape and a brief affidavit reading, “Received on S. S. ‘Philadelphia,’ Lat. 42.1 N., Long. 47.23 W., distance 2,099 (two thousand and ninety-nine) statute miles from Poldhu.”

On landing in New York, Marconi told a gathering of reporters, “This merely confirms what I have previously done in Newfoundland. There is no longer any question about the ability of wireless telegraphy to transmit messages across the Atlantic.” In an interview with H. H. McClure, Marconi said, “Why, I can sit down now and figure out just how much power, and what equipment would be required to send messages from Cornwall to the Cape of Good Hope or to Australia. I cannot understand why the scientists do not see this thing as I do.”

But the voyage had brought forth a troubling revelation, which Marconi for now kept secret. He had discovered that during daylight hours, once the ship was more than seven hundred miles out, it received no signals at all, though reception resumed after dark. He called this the “daylight effect.” It seemed, he said, that “clear sunlight and blue skies, though transparent, act as a kind of fog to powerful Hertzian rays.”

A couple of months later, still mystified and frustrated by the effect, Marconi was less judicious in his choice of words. “Damn the sun!” he shouted. “How long will it torment us?”

THAT SAME SPRING Marconi discovered that he had made a personal enemy of Kaiser Wilhelm.

It was a minor incident and very likely did not happen in the way the kaiser believed, but it occurred against a backdrop of degrading relations between Germany and Britain. Wilhelm’s drive to strengthen the German Navy had prompted Britain’s leaders to reconsider the merits of “splendid isolation” and to contemplate alliances with Russia and the once-feared French. That summer the Daily Mail would go so far as to recommend a preemptive strike at the German fleet, expressing in print an idea already in private circulation in the clubs of London and among some military planners.

The growing discord had its private analog in the long-standing animosity between Marconi and Adolf Slaby, and between Marconi’s company and its German opponent, Telefunken, which had begun marketing the Slaby-Arco-Braun apparatus around the world. Even the U.S. Navy was a customer. For Kaiser Wilhelm and Telefunken officials, Marconi’s policy that ships equipped with Marconi apparatus communicate only with other Marconi stations had become a source of rising irritation.

So things stood when, early in 1902, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm’s younger brother, set out for New York aboard the German liner Kronprinz Wilhelm, equipped with Marconi’s tunable wireless. As the ship came within range of the Lizard and Poldhu, the prince observed a demonstration of how messages from both stations could be received simultaneously through the ship’s one antenna. As the liner approached New York, the prince discovered to his surprise that communication between ships and a new Marconi station on Nantucket had become almost routine. (The new South Wellfleet station, with its four giant towers, was under construction.)

During his voyage back home, Prince Heinrich sailed aboard another German liner, the Deutschland, but this ship was equipped with Telefunken apparatus. The prince expected once again to experience the miracle of wireless conversation, but heard nothing from Nantucket, the Lizard, or Poldhu. Charges arose that Marconi’s men had chosen to snub the Deutschland, and by proxy the prince himself, and might even have jammed her wireless. The kaiser was furious, as was the German public. A wave of what one journal called “malignant Marconiphobia” swept across Germany.

But the Marconi company had not jammed the German ships wireless. Out of respect for the prince, it had ordered its operators to suspend temporarily the prohibition against conversing with alien apparatus. The cause of the silence encountered by the Deutschland cannot be known, but may have been a technical fault in the Telefunken apparatus.

Kaiser Wilhelm chose to see it as a deliberate affront and demanded that an international conference be convened to establish rules for wireless at sea. Marconi understood that his true intent was to seek an agreement requiring that all wireless systems communicate with one another. Marconi saw this proposal as a serious threat and condemned it. His company had built the world’s most elaborate and efficient network of wireless stations. To allow others now to use this network, Marconi argued, was simply unfair.

To Lodge and other Marconi critics, Kaiser Wilhelm’s campaign promised a comeuppance for Marconi that was long overdue. On April 2, 1902, Sylvanus Thompson wrote to Lodge, “Marconi’s whining about others coming in to rob him of the fruits of his work is too funny—a mere adventurer like him with his pinchbeck claims to be an original inventor!” (The word pinchbeck, from the name of an eighteenth-century watchmaker, is an archaic term for a goldlike alloy used in cheap jewelry. It served as a synonym for such words as counterfeit, fake, and sham.)

Relations with Germany degraded further. At Glace Bay Richard Vyvyan and his men got an unexpected, and unwelcome, visit from the Imperial German Navy. As they worked atop the cliffs at Table Head, they caught sight in the distance of a fleet of ships, which anchored off Glace Bay. Vyvyan immediately guessed their purpose, for the station was the only thing likely to draw the Germans to this desolate and dangerous roadstead.

A party came ashore that included an admiral and thirty officers. The day was hot, the walk a long one. Vyvyan met them at the gate to the station and offered refreshments.

The admiral declined. He and his men, he said, had come to see the station.

Vyvyan told him he would be delighted to show him around, provided of course that the admiral possessed written authorization from Marconi or the directors of the company.

The admiral had neither.

Vyvyan expressed his deepest regret. Without such authorization, he said, it simply was impossible to admit the admiral and his landing party.

The admiral bristled. He declared that His Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm, would hear of the incident and be furious.

Vyvyan was very sorry to hear it but was helpless to do anything further in the matter. He again offered his regrets. The admiral and his staff trudged off.

But the fleet remained at anchor. Vyvyan posted a sentry in one of the new towers.

His instincts proved correct. The next day the sentry spotted boats pulling away from the fleet with about 150 men on board. They landed and gathered at the gate. This time, Vyvyan noticed, no officers accompanied them.

The men attempted to push past him “in an unruly mob.”

Vyvyan stood his ground. “I informed them admission was forbidden and if they persisted I would use force to prevent them entering the station.”

The compound behind him was full of workmen, who sensed trouble and began to converge on the gate. Tension mounted.

But then, unexpectedly, one of the Germans blew a whistle. The sailors formed ranks and departed, transformed suddenly into “a disciplined force, and no longer an unruly crowd of men.”

The fleet departed.

FRUSTRATING FAILURES IN MARCONI’S long-range system continued to haunt him.

In June 1902 Edward was to have his coronation but was felled by appendicitis. At first the likelihood of his survival seemed slim, but he underwent surgery and survived, and once again he retreated to a royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert, to recover. Meanwhile the dignitaries dispatched to attend the coronation abruptly found themselves without a mission. Italy had sent a warship, the Carlo Alberto, and now loaned the ship and its six-hundred-man crew to Marconi to use as a floating laboratory until Edward’s recovery was advanced enough for the coronation to take place.

Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III decided that in the interim he would pay a visit to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He ordered the Carlo Alberto to meet him in Kronstadt, the Russian naval base, where he and the tsar would come aboard for a demonstration of Marconi’s wireless. En route, during a stop at the German naval port of Kiel, Marconi was able to receive signals at six hundred miles, and on the night of July 15, 1902, while in Kronstadt harbor, at sixteen hundred miles. But he found again that sunlight played havoc with daytime reception, and he heard nothing from Poldhu between sunrise and sunset. Which now posed a problem, what with King Victor Emmanuel and Tsar Nicholas about to visit. Marconi wanted to demonstrate the receipt of a message to his royal visitors but knew that it would be awkward to insist that they visit after dark. Luigi Solari proposed that Marconi install a wireless transmitter elsewhere on the ship and send a message from there. He intended no deception, he claimed, merely to demonstrate by day what could easily be achieved at night.

On July 17 the king and tsar came aboard and proceeded to Marconi’s wireless cabin, where Marconi showed off tapes of the messages received from Poldhu. Suddenly the receiver came to life and the Morse inker printed out a message of welcome and congratulations for Nicholas.

Startled and impressed, the tsar asked where the message had originated. Marconi confessed and disclosed the hidden transmitter. The tsar took no offense, apparently, for he asked to meet Solari and applauded his ingenuity.

The next month, while still engaged in experiments aboard the Carlo Alberto, Marconi confronted an inexplicable failure of his system. In one experiment he planned to receive messages for King Victor Emmanuel sent via Poldhu, but no messages came through. Nothing he tried improved reception, and he could find no good reason for the failure. He once had told Solari, “I am never emotional.” But now Solari watched as he smashed the receiver to pieces.

Marconi blamed Fleming. Without consulting Marconi, Fleming had altered a key component of the Poldhu station, thereby reversing a previous change ordered by Marconi himself. Fleming had also installed a new spark device of his own design.

Marconi complained to his new managing director, Cuthbert Hall, who had been the company’s second-ranked manager until the resignation a year earlier of Major Flood Page. Fleming’s device, Marconi wrote, had “proved in practical working to be unsatisfactory.”

Marconi ordered his men at Poldhu to replace Fleming’s invention with one of his own design—and now Fleming felt slighted. He objected that he ought to be consulted before changes of that magnitude were made.

Which only annoyed Marconi further.

In another letter to Cuthbert Hall, Marconi wrote, “It should be explained to [Fleming] that his function as Consulting Engineer is simply to advise upon points which may be expressly referred to him and in no way places upon the Company any obligation to seek his advice upon any matters in which it is deemed unnecessary…. I do not wish to inflict any unnecessary wound on Dr. Fleming’s susceptibilities, but, unless you are able to put the matter before him effectively in a right light, I shall feel bound to make a formal communication to the Board with reference to his general position.”

None of this, however, made it into a report by Luigi Solari on the Carlo Alberto experiments, published in the October 24, 1902, edition of The Electrician. His account made it seem as if everything had gone exactly as planned. Ordinarily readers would have had to accept Solari’s report at face value, for once again Marconi had made no provision for an impartial observer to vouch for his results.

In this case, however, someone else happened to have been listening in, without Marconi’s knowledge.

That summer the Eastern Telegraph Co., an undersea cable concern, had decided to install a wireless station of its own, at its cablehead at Porthcurno in Cornwall, about eighteen miles from Poldhu. The transatlantic cable industry still did not expect much competition from wireless but did see that it might have value as a source of additional traffic to be fed into their cables and for communicating with cable-repair ships. Eastern Telegraph hired Nevil Maskelyne for the job, and in August 1902 the magician erected a temporary antenna twenty-five feet tall. Immediately Maskelyne began picking up Morse signals from Poldhu, something the Marconi company had touted as being next to impossible given its tuning technology.

Maskelyne picked up a repeated signal, the letters CBCB. “Knowing that experiments were in progress between Poldhu and the Carlo Alberto,” Maskelyne wrote, “it did not take a Sherlock Holmes to discover that ‘CBCB’ was the call signal for the Carlo Alberto.” He and Eastern’s men nicknamed the ship the Carlo Bertie.

Maskelyne not only listened but kept copies of the tapes that emerged from his own Morse inker. Their true significance was not yet clear to him.