Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [52]
To Marconi, however, the greater risk lay in not making the attempt. He recognized that from a commercial standpoint his company was inert. He had amazed the world, but the world had not then come rushing to place orders for his apparatus. In the public view, wireless remained a novelty. Marconi saw that he had to do something big to jolt the world into at last recognizing the power and practicality of his technology.
That his plan might be impossible did not occur to him. He saw it in his mind. As far as he was concerned, he already had proven the physicists wrong. With each new experiment he had increased distance and clarity. If he could transmit across the English Channel, why not across the Atlantic? For him it came down to the height of his antenna and the intensity of charge that he was able to jolt into the sky.
He recognized, however, that to achieve his goal he needed help. Winding wire to produce an induction coil capable of signaling thirty feet was one thing, but building a power plant capable of sending a message thousands of miles was something else altogether. For this he needed Fleming.
At first Fleming was skeptical, but by August 1899, after studying the problems involved, he wrote to Marconi, “I have not the slightest doubt I can at once put up two masts 300 feet high and it is only a question of expense getting high enough to signal to America.”
To better evaluate what it might entail, as well as to arrange another publicity event—coverage by wireless of the America’s Cup race off New York at the request of the New York Herald—Marconi booked his first voyage to the United States. On September 11, 1899, accompanied by three assistants, including W. W. Bradfield, Marconi sailed for New York.
ON ARRIVAL MARCONI WAS THRONGED by reporters, who were startled by his youth—“a mere boy,” the Herald observed—though at least one writer was struck by his alien appearance. “When you meet Marconi you’re bound to notice that he’s a ‘for’ner.’ The information is written all over him. His suit of clothes is English. In stature he is French. His boot heels are Spanish military. His hair and moustache are German. His mother is Irish. His father is Italian. And altogether, there’s little doubt that Marconi is a thorough cosmopolitan.” The passage was not meant as praise.
Marconi and his colleagues checked into the Hoffman House at Broadway and 24th Street in Manhattan, opposite a deepening triangular excavation that was soon to become the foundation of the Flatiron Building. They had just begun unpacking when the hotel’s steam boiler, in the basement, exploded. A frightened guest blamed it on Marconi and his mysterious equipment. To quash the guest’s concern, Marconi’s men opened their trunks to reveal the quiescent apparatus within—and only then realized that the most important trunk was missing. Without the coherers it contained, Marconi would be forced to cancel his coverage of the America’s Cup. His confident predictions of success had received a lot of attention from newspapers in America and abroad. His failure, with the weak excuse of lost luggage, would get at least as much publicity, perhaps even cause the price of his company’s stock to slide and thereby eliminate any hope of paying for his transatlantic experiment.
Ordinarily Marconi’s demeanor was cool and quiet. As the Herald noted, Marconi exuded the “peculiar semi-abstract air that characterizes men who devote their days to study and scientific experiment.” The New York Tribune called him “a bit absent-minded.” But