Thunderstruck

I do not feel the least alarm,

The signal S can do no harm.

It might mean sell to anxious sellers,

It may mean sold to other fellers.

Whether it is sold or simply sell,

Marconi’s S may go to—well!

IN NEW YORK JOSEPHINE Holman spent Christmas without her fiance. She was coming to see that being pledged to a man so obsessed with work brought with it certain disadvantages, one of them being loneliness.

NEWS FROM AMERICA

Letter,

Sunday, March 20, 1910

To Clara and Paul Martinetti

Dear Clara and Paul,

Please forgive me for not running in during the week, but I have really been so upset by very bad news from Belle that I did not feel equal to talking about anything, and now I have had a cable saying she is so dangerously ill with double pleuropneumonia that I am considering if I had better not go over at once. I don’t want to worry you with my troubles, but I felt that I must explain why I had not been to see you. I will try and run in during the week and have a chat. Hope both of you are well, with love and good wishes.

Yours very sincerely,

Peter

Telegram,

Thursday, March 24, 1910

To Paul and Clara Martinetti

Belle died yesterday at 6 o’clock.

“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