Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [135]
To Marconi, the prize was an immense honor and utterly unexpected, for he had never considered himself a physicist. In the opening moments of his Nobel lecture in Stockholm, Marconi conceded that he was not even a scientist. “I might mention,” he said, “that I never studied Physics or electrotechnics in the regular manner, although as a boy I was deeply interested in those subjects.” And he frankly admitted that he still did not fully understand why he was able to transmit across the Atlantic, only that he could. As he put it, “Many facts connected with the transmission of electric waves over great distances still await a satisfactory explanation.”
He acknowledged that other mysteries remained as well. “It often occurs that a ship fails to communicate with a nearby station, but can correspond with perfect ease with a distant one,” he told the audience. He did not know why this was the case. Nor had he found, yet, a persuasive explanation for why sunlight so distorted communication, though he was “inclined to believe” in a theory recently put forth by physicist J. J. Thomson, that “the portion of the earth’s atmosphere which is facing the sun will contain more ions or electrons than that portion which is in darkness” and therefore absorb energy from the waves being transmitted. He had found too that sunrise and sunset were times of especially acute distortion. “It would almost appear as if electric waves in passing from dark space to illuminated space, and vice versa, were reflected or refracted in such a manner as to be deviated from their normal path.”
But a few moments later, with particular satisfaction, Marconi said, “Whatever may be its present shortcomings and defects there can be no doubt that Wireless Telegraphy even over great distances has come to stay, and will not only stay, but continue to advance.”
HE HAD COME FAR. Though his company was struggling financially, he believed its troubles soon would ease. Ships now routinely hailed each other at midocean. Shipboard newspapers were becoming common. The term Marconigram had entered the lexicon of travel. Despite the competition rising everywhere, especially in Germany and America, his company had clearly achieved dominance in the realm of wireless, and in large part this was a consequence of his transatlantic gamble and the knowledge it had yielded. In Stockholm, receiving the prize, it seemed as though success had crept up unawares and had overtaken him only there at the podium, as men in black and women in gowns rose and applauded.
The biggest hurdle that remained was the skepticism that still confronted long-range wireless. For reasons he could not understand, the world continued to see it as an invention of limited use, and nothing he did seemed capable of draining once and for all that vast and persistent reservoir of doubt.
FIVE JARS
ON THURSDAY, JULY 14, 1910, two men from the Islington Mortuary Chapel of Ease on Holloway Road came to Hilldrop Crescent to collect the remains and bring them back to the mortuary for a formal postmortem examination, to be conducted the next morning by Drs. Pepper and Marshall. The mortuary’s men brought a coffin. Two constables placed the remains inside, using only their bare hands.
Dew and the two doctors watched this process closely and from time to time selected items to be placed on a tray beside the excavation. They found a Hinde’s curler with hair still crimped to its vulcanite core; two pieces of what appeared to be a woman’s “undervest,” or camisole, with six buttons and lace around the