Thunderstruck

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