Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [93]
Smith asked him into his room, calmed him, and on impulse invited him—“begged him,” Smith recalled—to bring his experiments to Canada. (At this point Newfoundland was a colony of Britain; it did not join Canada until 1949.) Over the next few days Smith arranged a formal invitation from the Canadian government. Marconi relented and set off for Nova Scotia, part of Canada since 1867, to scout a new location.
A party of dignitaries met him at the wharf in North Sydney, at the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, and whisked him into a train for a brief trip south to Glace Bay to show him a spot called Table Head. Aptly named, it was a flat plateau of ice and blown snow atop cliffs striated with bands of blue-gray and rust that fell a hundred feet straight down to the sea. “The site,” Smith said, “delighted Marconi.”
He set off for Ottawa to negotiate a formal agreement with the government.
ON CHRISTMAS DAY two operators with Anglo-American Cable exchanged salvos of doggerel. One in Nova Scotia tapped out,
Best Christmas greetings from North Sydney,
Hope you are sound in heart and kidney.
Next year will find us quite unable
To exchange over the cable.
Marconi will our finish see,
The Cable Co’s have ceased to be.
No further need of automatics
Retards, resistances and statics.
I’ll then across the ether sea
Waft Christmas greetings unto thee.
His counterpart in Liverpool responded,
Don’t be alarmed, the Cable Co’s
Will not be dead as you suppose.
Marconi may have been deceived,
In what he firmly has believed.
But be it so, or be it not,
The cable routes won’t be forgot.
His speed will never equal ours,
Where we take minutes, he’ll want hours.
Besides, his poor weak undulations
Must be confined to their own stations.
This is for him to overcome,
Before we’re sent to our long home.
Don’t be alarmed, my worthy friend.
Full many a year precedes our end.
North Sydney ended the exchange:
Thanks old man, for the soothing balm,
Which makes me resolute and calm.
I do not feel the least alarm,
The signal S can do no harm.
It might mean sell to anxious sellers,
It may mean sold to other fellers.
Whether it is sold or simply sell,
Marconi’s S may go to—well!
IN NEW YORK JOSEPHINE Holman spent Christmas without her fiancé. She was coming to see that being pledged to a man so obsessed with work brought with it certain disadvantages, one of them being loneliness.
NEWS FROM AMERICA
Letter,
Sunday, March 20, 1910
To Clara and Paul Martinetti
Dear Clara and Paul,
Please forgive me for not running in during the week, but I have really been so upset by very bad news from Belle that I did not feel equal to talking about anything, and now I have had a cable saying she is so dangerously ill with double pleuropneumonia that I am considering if I had better not go over at once. I don’t want to worry you with my troubles, but I felt that I must explain why I had not been to see you. I will try and run in during the week and have a chat. Hope both of you are well, with love and good wishes.
Yours very sincerely,
Peter
Telegram,
Thursday, March 24, 1910
To Paul and Clara Martinetti
Belle died yesterday at 6 o’clock.
“DAMN THE SUN!”
ON HIS WAY BACK TO LONDON, with a formal offer from Canada in hand, Marconi stopped off in New York and attended a January 13, 1902, banquet of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, where he was to be the guest of honor. Unknown to him, the affair nearly proved to be a disaster.
At first a number of prominent scientists declined to attend, expressing doubt as to whether Marconi really had sent signals across the Atlantic, but by the night of January 13 the institute’s leaders had managed to recruit a ballroom full of believers. They held an elaborate banquet. Black signs at three points in the room bore the names Marconi, Poldhu, and St. John’s, with strings of lamps hung between them. At intervals, the lamps flashed three dots. The menus were printed with ink made from Italian olive oil, and the