Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [44]
August 4, 1898. Sir James to Victoria:
“H.R.H. the Prince of Wales has passed another excellent night, and is in very good spirits and health. The knee is most satisfactory.”
August 5, 1898. Sir James to Victoria:
“H.R.H. the Prince of Wales has passed another excellent night, and the knee is in good condition.”
There was this heated exchange, from a woman aboard the Osborne to another at the house, “Could you come to tea with us some day?”
A reply came rocketing back through the ether, “Very sorry cannot come to tea.”
THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY intrigued Edward, and he was delighted to have Marconi aboard. By way of thanks he gave Marconi a royal tie pin.
While on the yacht, Marconi wrote to Lodge about his success in establishing communication between the queen and her son. “I am glad to say that everything has gone off first rate from the very start, having sent thousands of words both ways without having had once to repeat a word.” He noted that although the distance was less than two miles, the two locations were “out of sight of each other, a hill intervening between.”
He closed, “I am in great haste,” and underlined his signature with a bold black slash of his pen, something he would do forever after.
IN THE MIDST OF COURTING Lodge, Marconi’s company experienced its first fatality, though the death had nothing to do with wireless itself.
One of Marconi’s men, Edward Glanville, traveled to remote Rathlin Island, seven miles off the coast of Northern Ireland, to help conduct an experiment for Lloyd’s of London, for which he was to help install wireless transmitters and receivers on Rathlin and on the mainland at Ballycastle, for use in reporting the passage of ships to Lloyd’s central office in London. A tempestuous stretch of sea separated Rathlin and Ballycastle and up until now had made communication problematic.
In Ballycastle, where George Kemp managed the mainland portion of the work, the apparatus was placed in a child’s bedroom in “a lady’s house on the cliff,” and the wires to the antenna were run out the child’s window. If all went well, messages from Rathlin would be transmitted to Ballycastle by wireless, regardless of fog and storms, and relayed from there by conventional telegraph to Lloyd’s.
One day Glanville disappeared. Searchers found his body at the base of a three-hundred-foot cliff.
Ever since joining Marconi, George Kemp had found himself called upon to perform diverse duties, but none so sad as now. On August 22, 1898, Kemp wrote in his diary, “I wired to London and arranged for the despatch of a coffin and the arrival of the coroner and steamer and, at 6 P.M. I went to Rathlin and examined the body with a doctor. I washed the body and placed it in the coffin. An inquest was held and the coroner returned ‘death by accident.’ It appeared that the people on the Island had often seen him climbing over the cliffs with a hammer with which he examined the various strata of the earth, and this was no doubt the cause of the accident.”
Glanville’s death briefly derailed the ongoing conversation between the Marconi company and Lodge, but now the courtship renewed. Lodge resisted, and declined even to give Marconi a demonstration of his technology.
Marconi grew impatient. On November 2, 1898, he wrote, “I sincerely hope you will be able to make us this exhibition or in some way arrange that we may work together rather than in opposition, which I am certain would be to the disadvantage of us both.” In the meantime, he added, “It might…facilitate matters if you would kindly let us have an answer to the following questions.” He then asked Lodge how many of his transmitters could operate in a given area without interference, what distance he so far had achieved, and what distance might be possible in the future.
Here again Marconi demonstrated his social