Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [35]
Kapp had two questions:
“1) Is there anything in Marconi’s invention?
“2) If yes, could you arrange for Slaby and myself to see the apparatus and witness experiments if we come over to London toward the end of next week?”
He added: “Please treat this letter as confidential and say nothing to Marconi about the Emperor.”
Even though by now Marconi’s fear of prying eyes was more acute than ever, Preece invited Slaby to come and observe a round of experiments set for mid-May 1897, during which Marconi would attempt for the first time to send signals across a body of water.
IN THE MEANTIME MARCONI contemplated a surprise of his own, for Preece.
Until now Marconi had considered that a contract with the post office might be the best way to profit from his invention and at the same time gain the resources to develop it into a practical means of telegraphy. But ever aware of each moment lost, Marconi had grown uneasy about the pace at which the post office made decisions. He told his father, “As far as the Government is concerned, I do not believe that they will decide very soon whether to acquire my rights or not. I also believe that they will not pay a great deal for them.”
In the wake of Preece’s lectures, investors had begun approaching Marconi with offers. Two Americans offered £10,000—equivalent to just over $1 million today—for his United States patent. Marconi evaluated this and other early proposals with the cold acuity of a lawyer and found none compelling enough to accept. In April, however, his cousin Henry Jameson Davis came to him with a proposal to form a company with a syndicate of investors linked to the Jameson family. The syndicate would pay Marconi £15,000 in cash—about $1.6 million today—and grant him controlling ownership of company stock, while also pledging £25,000 for future experiments.
Marconi gave the proposal the same scrutiny he had given all previous offers. The terms were generous. At the time £15,000 was a fortune. In H. G. Wells’s novel Tono-Bungay one character exults in achieving a salary of £300 a year, because it was enough to provide a small house and a living for himself and a new wife. Best of all, Jameson Davis was family. Marconi knew him and trusted him. The investors, in turn, were known within the Jameson empire. It was too compelling to refuse, but Marconi understood that by accepting the offer he risked alienating Preece and the post office. The question was, could anything be done to keep Preece’s sense of hurt from transforming the post office into a powerful enemy?
What followed was a carefully orchestrated campaign to depict this offer as something that Marconi himself had nothing to do with but that as a businessman he was obligated to take seriously, in the interests of his invention.
Marconi enlisted the help of a patent adviser, J. C. Graham, who knew Preece. On April 9, 1897, Graham wrote to Preece and told him the terms of the offer and added that Marconi had “some considerable doubts about closing with it lest apparently he should be doing anything which even appears to be ungrateful to you, for I understand from him that he is under a great debt of gratitude to you in more than one respect.
“As the matter is evidently weighing heavily on his mind, and as he appears to have only one object in view, viz., to do the right thing, I thought it was just possible that a letter from me might be of some use. I, of course, know nothing more of the case than I have set out above.”
From the text alone, Graham’s motive for writing the letter was far from obvious, and Preece must have read it several times. Was he asking Preece’s opinion, or was his intent simply to notify Preece obliquely that Marconi intended to accept the offer and hoped there would be no hard feelings?
The next morning, Saturday, Marconi stopped by the post office building but found Preece gone. After returning to his home in Talbot Road, Westbourne Park, Marconi composed a letter to Preece.
He began it, “I am in difficulty.”
The rest of the letter seemed structured to follow a