Thunderstruck

RATS

THE 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.

FLEMING 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.

MASKELYNE 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.

THE 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.

“I feel certain that, if the audience present at my lecture had known that in addition to the ordinary chances of failure in difficult lecture experiments the display was carried through in the teeth of a cowardly and concealed attempt to spoil the demonstration, there would have been a strong feeling of indignation.”

Fleming allowed that tapping Marconi’s wireless communications might indeed constitute fair play, but disrupting a lecture to the Royal Institution was out of bounds. “I should have thought,” he sniffed, “that the theatre which has been the site of the most brilliant lecture demonstrations for a century past would have been sacred from the attacks of a scientific hooliganism of this kind.”

He wrote that he did not yet know who had attempted this sacrilege and urged any reader who might “happen to obtain a clue” to pass the information to him. “There may not be any legal remedy against monkeyish pranks of this description; but I feel sure that, if the perpetrators had been caught red-handed, public opinion would have condoned an attempt to make these persons themselves the subject of a ‘striking experiment.’”

From Fleming’s perspective, the letter was perfect, a jewel of subtle threat. He could not prove beyond doubt that Maskelyne was the pirate and therefore could not accuse him openly, but he had crafted his letter so as to transmit to the magician a warning that such behavior would not be tolerated. It is easy to imagine his satisfaction at opening The Times that Thursday morning and seeing those few inches of black type, knowing full well that not just Maskelyne but all of Britain’s scientists, statesmen, barristers, thinkers, and writers, perhaps even the king, would read them, and that Maskelyne’s teacup would by then be chattering against its saucer as the chill of impending danger crept down his spine.

THE LETTER WAS PERFECT—EXACTLY what Maskelyne had hoped for. Better, actually, given the charmingly veiled threat that Fleming might stoop to inflicting physical harm. If his teacup chattered, it was from delight at the prospect of composing his reply. He posted his own letter on Friday, June 12, from the Egyptian Hall. The Times published it the next day.

“Sir,” Maskelyne wrote, “The matter referred to in your columns, yesterday, by Professor Fleming has a public importance far greater than he appears to imagine. It is a case in which members of the public are driven to take extreme measures in order to obtain information to which they are justly entitled.”

He wrote, “The Professor complains that, during his lecture on the 4th inst., the Marconi instruments were disturbed by outside interference, and desires to know the names of those who perpetrated the ‘outrage.’ His suggestions of public opprobrium, legal proceedings, and personal violence may, of course, be dismissed as mere crackling of thorns beneath the pot. Personally, I have no hesitation in admitting my complicity as an accessory before the fact, the original suggestion having been made by Dr. Horace Manders.”

He countered Fleming’s charge of hooliganism by asking, “If this be described as ‘scientific hooliganism’ and the like, what epithets must we apply to the action of those who, having publicly made certain specific claims, resent being taken at their word?

“We have been led to believe that Marconi messages are proof against interference. The recent Marconi ‘triumphs’ have all been in that direction. Professor Fleming himself has vouched for the reliability and efficacy of the Marconi syntony. The object of the lecture was to demonstrate this.” He wrote that he and Manders merely had put Fleming’s claims to the test. “If all we had heard were true, he would never have known what was going on. Efforts at interference would have been effort wasted. But when we come to actual fact, we find that a simple untuned radiator upsets the ‘tuned’ Marconi receivers—”

Here he twisted the knife.

“—and Professor Fleming’s letter proves it.”

Immediately the press leaped into the fray. If Fleming simply had kept the cap on his inkwell, the whole matter likely would have remained dormant. As the Morning Leader of June 15, 1903, noted, “Nothing would have been heard of it had not Professor Fleming sent his indignant letter to the ‘Times’ denouncing the ‘scientific hooligans’ who upset him. That was just what Mr. Maskelyne hoped for; and now he is chuckling at his success in ‘drawing the badger.’” In an interview in the Saturday, June 13, edition of the St. James Gazette, Maskelyne noted that he himself had composed the “diddling” verse. Now he added another, deeper dimension to his attack. “The Professor called up the name of Faraday in condemning us for what we did. Supposing Faraday had been alive, whom would he have accused of disgracing the Royal Institution—those who were endeavouring to ascertain the truth or those who were using it for trade purposes?”

He accused Fleming of giving two lectures that afternoon. “The first was by Professor Fleming the scientist, and was everything that a scientific lecture ought to be; the second was by Professor Fleming, the expert adviser to the Marconi Company.”

THAT DECEMBER MARCONI declined to renew Fleming’s contract.