two people speaking to one another would almost monopolize earth and air for miles around them. I don’t think it would be possible to arrange for a dozen pairs of people to converse together by this method within a circle of 10 miles radius.”
A month later Kelvin and his wife visited Marconi’s station at the Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight, where Marconi invited Kelvin to key in his own long-distance message. Now at last Kelvin seemed to awaken to the commercial potential of wireless. He insisted on paying Marconi for his message, the first paid wireless telegram and, incidentally, the first revenue for Marconi’s company.
Marconi asked Kelvin to become a consulting engineer. On June 11 Kelvin agreed tentatively to do so, and the value of his support immediately became evident. That same day Kelvin wrote to Oliver Lodge, “I think it would be a very good thing if you would write direct to Marconi an olive branch letter.” He told Lodge that after spending two days with Marconi, “I formed a very favorable opinion of him. He said I might write to you…. I know he would like your cooperation and I think it would be in every way right that you should in some way be connected with the work.” He informed Lodge of his own decision to join with Marconi as consulting engineer and wrote, “I suggested that you also should be asked to act in the same capacity and he thoroughly approved of my suggestion. But before I had any idea of taking part myself I wished to promote the olive branch affair and I hope (indeed feel sure) you will take the same view of it as I do.”
He added an enthusiastic postscript about his time at Marconi’s Needles station: “I saw (and practiced!) telegraphing thence through ether to & from Bournemouth. Admirable. Quite practical!!!”
Kelvin seemed all but certain to join the company, when suddenly he expressed qualms that had nothing to do with Marconi or his technology. What troubled him was the idea that in allying himself with Marconi, he would be joining an enterprise devoted not just to exploring nature’s secrets but to making as much profit as possible. On June 12, the day after his letter to Lodge, Kelvin wrote again. “In accepting to be consulting engineer, I am making a condition that no more money be asked from the public, for the present at all events; as it seems to me that the present Syndicate has as much capital as is needed for the work in prospect…. I am by no means confident that this condition will be acceptable to the promoters. But without it I cannot act.”
For Marconi, this was an untenable condition, and Kelvin never did become consulting engineer.
Now Marconi concentrated on Lodge.
LODGE REVELED IN HIS NEW POWER to command Marconi’s attention. For help in dealing with Marconi, Lodge recruited a friend, Alexander Muirhead, who ran a company that manufactured telegraphic instruments of high quality. Muirhead met Jameson Davis at the Reform Club in London and immediately afterward wrote to Lodge, “Today was only the beginning of the game. I feel sure now that they want to combine with us. Have patience it will come about.”
In July Muirhead offered to sell Lodge’s tuning technology to Marconi—for ?30,000, the same steep price Marconi had quoted to the post office for his own patent rights. In a letter to Lodge dated July 29, 1898, Jameson Davis wrote, “This struck me and my directors as being exceedingly high, more especially, as we are without any information as to what the inventions may be.” He wanted specifics, but so far none had been forthcoming. “As we are very anxious to have you with us, I should be very glad if we could have this matter cleared up, and come to some good business arrangement.”
Now Marconi himself wrote to Lodge and, in an apparent attempt to advance the courtship by demonstrating his own rising prominence, included an intriguing return address:
ROYAL YACHT OSBORNE COWES ISLE OF WIGHT
ANYONE WHO COULD READ a newspaper knew that at that moment Edward, the Prince of Wales, was aboard the royal yacht recuperating from injuries to his leg caused when he fell down a staircase during a ball in Paris. His mother, Queen Victoria, would have preferred that he spend this time at the royal estate, Osborne House, where she herself was staying, but Edward preferred the yacht, and a little distance. The vessel was moored about two miles away in the Solent, the channel between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. In any preceding age this distance would have assured Edward as much privacy as he wished, but his mother had read about Marconi and now asked him to establish a wireless link between the house and the
Ever mindful of opportunities to draw the attention of the press, Marconi agreed. At his direction workers extended the
At one point, while adjusting his equipment, Marconi sought to cut through the Osborne House gardens, at a time when the queen herself was there in her wheeled chair. The queen valued her privacy and commanded her staff to guard against uninvited intrusion. A gardener stopped Marconi and told him to “go back and around.”
Marconi, by now all of twenty-four years old, refused and told the gardener he would walk through the garden or abandon the project. He turned and went back to his hotel.
An attendant reported Marconi’s response to the queen. In her mild but imperious way she said, “Get another electrician.”
“Alas, Your Majesty,” the attendant said, “England has no Marconi.”
The queen considered this, then dispatched a royal carriage to Marconi’s hotel to retrieve him. They met and talked. She was seventy-nine years old, he was barely out of boyhood, but he spoke with the confidence of a Lord Salisbury, and she was charmed. She praised his work and wished him well.
Soon the queen and Edward were in routine communication via wireless. Over the next two weeks Queen Victoria, Edward, and his doctor, Sir James Reid, traded 150 messages, the nature of which demonstrated yet again that no matter how innovative the means of communication, men and women will find a way to make the messages sent as tedious as possible.
August 4, 1898. Sir James to Victoria:
“H.R.H. the Prince of Wales has passed another excellent night, and is in very good spirits and health. The knee is most satisfactory.”
August 5, 1898. Sir James to Victoria:
“H.R.H. the Prince of Wales has passed another excellent night, and the knee is in good condition.”
There was this heated exchange, from a woman aboard the
A reply came rocketing back through the ether, “Very sorry cannot come to tea.”
THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY intrigued Edward, and he was delighted to have Marconi aboard. By way of thanks he gave Marconi a royal tie pin.
While on the yacht, Marconi wrote to Lodge about his success in establishing communication between the queen and her son. “I am glad to say that everything has gone off first rate from the very start, having sent thousands of words both ways without having had once to repeat a word.” He noted that although the distance was less than two miles, the two locations were “out of sight of each other, a hill intervening between.”
He closed, “I am in great haste,” and underlined his signature with a bold black slash of his pen, something he would do forever after.
IN THE MIDST OF COURTING Lodge, Marconi’s company experienced its first fatality, though the death had nothing to do with wireless itself.
