Signor Marconi's Magic Box by Gavin Weightman Read Free Book Online Page B

has been more than usually absurd.’
    While this storm was brewing between his bearded benefactor and the piqued professor, the Jameson family freed Marconi from Preece’s patronage. His father Giuseppe was persuaded to put up the £300 necessary to pay for legal expenses in procuring patents. Then his cousin, the engineer Henry Jameson-Davis, raised £100,000 in the City, mostly from corn merchants connected with the Jameson whiskey business. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company was set up with this substantial investment, equivalent to more than £5 million in today’s money. It was a commercial venture, the sole purpose of which was to buy the patents and give Marconi the money he needed to continue his experiments. He got sixty thousand of the £1 shares, £15,000 for his patents and £25,000 to spend on research. It was a massive vote of confidence from his mother’s family and their business associates.
    Henry Jameson-Davis was not acting in a sentimental fashion by raising this huge sum for his cousin. Jameson-Davis was the archetypal Victorian gentleman, a keen foxhunter who would be out with the hounds in Ireland and England as often as six times a week in the winter hunting season. He would not gamble family money on a twenty-three-year-old with an intriguing but largely untried gadget without good reason. He and the other investors
hoped to make a fortune when in July 1897 the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company opened its offices at 28 Mark Lane in the City. By buying the patent rights as soon as they were awarded, the company put William Preece and the British Post Office out of the picture, and left Marconi to get on with the work of demonstrating what a valuable invention the newly formed company owned.
    Marconi anticipated that Preece would not take kindly to being supplanted by a family concern, and on 21 July 1897 he wrote to him from the Villa Griffone explaining his position. All the governments of Europe, he said, wanted demonstrations of his equipment, his patents were being disputed by the likes of Professor Oliver Lodge in England and others in America, and he needed money to refine his equipment, take out new patents and fund more ambitious experiments. His letter concluded: ‘Hoping that you will continue in your benevolence towards me I beg to state that all your great kindness shall never be forgotten by me in all my life. I shall also do my best to keep the company on amicable terms with the British Government. I hope to be in London on Saturday. Believe me dear Sir, yours truly G. Marconi.’
    Naturally enough, Preece replied that the patronage of the British Post Office could no longer be continued. He showed little concern over the loss of control of the new invention, evidently taking the view that it was not going to be of much practical use anyway.
    Privately, Preece was pouring cold water on Marconi’s spark transmitter in confidential memoranda to the Post Office and the government, suggesting that really there was not much future in it, and in any case the patent was probably not secure, as Oliver Lodge had a prior claim to it. In his Toynbee Hall lecture Preece had said, to the cheers of the audience, that he would see to it that the Post Office would fund Marconi. But the promised £10,000 had not been forthcoming. With his family firm, Marconi now had the funds and the freedom to set up whatever experiments he wished. As he had become convinced that the most promising
practical use of wireless was sending messages from ships to shore, he headed for the coast to test the range and flexibility of wireless telegraphy.

6
    Beside the Seaside
    T his was the heyday of the English seaside resort, before the new fashion for sunbathing drew the wealthy to the Mediterranean in the summer months. The luxury Blue Trains steamed down to the French Riviera only in winter, when the mild climate attracted the English aristocracy who developed the resorts of Nice and Cannes. Queen Victoria