Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [42]
In his report of November 1899 Preece advised against granting the license. Marconi had yet to establish a viable commercial service anywhere, he argued. To grant a license now would merely enrich Marconi and his backers by causing an “ignorant excitement” among investors. “A new company would be formed with a large capital, the public would wildly subscribe to an undertaking endorsed by the imprimatur of the Postmaster-General and the Government would encourage another South Sea Bubble.”
Later Preece wrote to Lodge, “I want to show you my Report. It is now with the Attorney General. It is very strong and dead against Marconi on all points.”
LODGE WAS PLEASED. He wrote to Sylvanus Thompson about what he called “Preece’s attempt to upset their applecart.”
He wrote: “I can’t help thinking it is a bit well deserved and just, though rather belated.”
MARCONI CAME TO RECOGNIZE that he needed his own allies, both to neutralize the opposition of Lodge and to help dispel the still-pervasive skepticism that wireless telegraphy would ever be more than a novelty.
First he courted one of Britain’s most revered men of science, Lord Kelvin. Early on Kelvin had declared himself a skeptic on the practical future of wireless, stating—famously—“Wireless is all very well but I’d rather send a message by a boy on a pony.”
In May 1898 Kelvin stopped by Marconi’s offices in London, where Marconi himself demonstrated his apparatus. Kelvin was impressed but remained skeptical about its future value. At this point Marconi and Lodge both were developing methods of tuning signals so that messages from one transmitter would not distort those from another, but Kelvin deemed interference a problem that would only grow worse as power and distance increased. Kelvin wrote Lodge, “The chief objection I see to much practical use at distances up to 15 miles is that two people speaking to one another would almost monopolize earth and air for miles around them. I don’t think it would be possible to arrange for a dozen pairs of people to converse together by this method within a circle of 10 miles radius.”
A month later Kelvin and his wife visited Marconi’s station at the Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight, where Marconi invited Kelvin to key in his own long-distance message. Now at last Kelvin seemed to awaken to the commercial potential of wireless. He insisted on paying Marconi for his message, the first paid wireless telegram and, incidentally, the first revenue for Marconi’s company.
Marconi asked Kelvin to become a consulting engineer. On June 11 Kelvin agreed tentatively to do so, and the value of his support immediately became evident. That same day Kelvin wrote to Oliver Lodge, “I think it would be a very good thing if you would write direct to Marconi an olive branch letter.” He told Lodge that after spending two days with Marconi, “I formed a very favorable opinion of him. He said I might write to you…. I know he would like your cooperation and I think it would be in every way right that you should in some way be connected with the work.” He informed Lodge of his own decision to join with Marconi as consulting engineer and wrote, “I suggested that you also should be asked to act in the same capacity and he thoroughly approved of my suggestion. But before I had any idea of taking part myself I wished to promote the olive branch affair and I hope (indeed feel sure) you will take the same view of it as I do.”
He added an enthusiastic postscript about his time at Marconi’s Needles station: “I saw (and practiced!) telegraphing thence through ether to & from Bournemouth. Admirable. Quite practical!!!”
Kelvin seemed all but certain to join the company, when suddenly he expressed qualms that had nothing to do with Marconi or his technology. What troubled him was the idea that in allying himself with Marconi, he would be joining an enterprise devoted not just to exploring nature’s secrets but to making as much profit as possible. On June 12, the day after his letter to Lodge, Kelvin wrote again. “In accepting to be consulting engineer,