Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [39]
Preece recommended the government pay a mere £10,000 for the patent rights—about $1.1 million today—and doubted Marconi would feel himself in a position to argue. “It must be remembered that Mr. Marconi is a very young man…. He is a foreigner. He has proved himself to be open and candid and he has resisted very tempting offers. He has very little experience. On the other hand he cannot do much without our assistance and his system can scarcely be made practical for telegraphy by any one in this country but by ourselves.”
But just five days later Marconi founded his new company. His representatives registered its name as the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. and identified its headquarters as being in London. Jameson Davis became managing director, with the understanding that once the enterprise was well established he would resign. Marconi received sixty thousand shares of stock valued at one pound each, representing 60 percent ownership of the company. He also received the £15,000 cash, and the company’s pledge to spend another £25,000 developing the technology.
Within six months, the value of Marconi’s stock tripled and suddenly his sixty thousand shares were worth £180,000 pounds, about $20 million today. At twenty-three years of age, he was both famous and rich.
IN BERLIN ADOLF SLABY had been busy. On June 17, one month after witnessing the Bristol Channel experiments, he wrote to Preece, “I have now constructed the whole apparatus of M[onsieur] Marconi and it works quite well. After returning from my holidays, which I intend to spend at the sea shore, I will try to signal through some distance. I feel always indebted to your extreme kindness in remembering those very pleasant and interesting days at Lavernock.”
But Slaby’s warm thanks belied grander ambitions, both for himself and for Germany. Soon he and two associates would begin marketing their own system and, with the enthusiastic backing of the kaiser and a cadre of powerful German investors, would become locked in a shadow war with Marconi that embodied the animosities then gaining sway in the larger world.
For the moment, however, Slaby pretended that all that mattered was science and knowledge. He wrote to Preece, “We are happy men, that we need not care for politics. The friendship that science had made cannot be disturbed and I wish to repeat to you the truest feelings of my heart.”
BRUCE MILLER
BRUCE MILLER HAD ONCE BEEN a prizefighter and had the handsome but battered features to prove it. He had given up boxing for the stage and had come to England some months before meeting Belle in hopes of making a career in variety. He was, literally, a one-man band, playing drums, harmonica, and banjo all at the same time, and performed in London and in the provinces, at Southend-on-Sea, Weston-super-Mare, and elsewhere. When he met Belle, however, he was preparing to leave for Paris and the Paris Exposition of 1900, where he had entered into a partnership involving certain “attractions” at the exposition. He met her one evening in December 1899, about a month after Crippen’s departure for Philadelphia. He was sharing an apartment with a male roommate, an American music teacher, on Torrington Square in Bloomsbury, adjacent to University College. That evening Belle came to the apartment to have dinner with his roommate, who introduced them. On that occasion, Miller said, “I merely shook hands with her and went away.”
They met again, perhaps with Miller’s roommate as intermediary, and became friends. Belle clearly was drawn to his size and rugged good looks.