The figure of Guglielmo Marconi gives us a
precious example of inspiring worth and power: a business model which is
relevant more than ever, based on courage, magnanimity, the desire to create,
the powerful ability to see and evoke the future and, especially, on that
kingly ingredient, that unfortunately gets rarer and rarer: ideas.
There was a man who in 1899, at only twenty five years old, founded the
“Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company” (which would become the Marconi
Company); who in the same year established the “Marconi Wireless Telegraph
Company of America” in the US (which would become known as the “Radio
Corporation of America” or RCA); who in 1922, after
making the first broadcast transmission in history from the Vatican City,
founded the “British Broadcasting Company” (becoming the “British Broadcasting
Corporation” over the years and universally known as the BBC)
and who in 1926 set the scene for the first global radio-telecommunications
network, the “Imperial Wireless Chain” (which went on to merge with “Cable
& Wireless”). In 1909, this same man received the Nobel Prize for Physics
when only thirty five years old and was honoured throughout his life with numerous
acknowledgements by States, monarchs and scientific and cultural associations.
When he died in Rome in 1937 he was granted a unique tribute never to be
repeated: all the stations of the world observed silence for two minutes,
leaving the Earth “muted, thinking about the final hours of this man of
destiny”. The name of this genial scientist who also knew how to be a visionary
and daring businessman: Guglielmo Marconi.
Marconi, the “Father of wireless telegraphy”, was strongly convinced
that electromagnetic (or Hertzian) waves could be employed for practical and
essential uses to serve humanity. This conviction, together with his excellent
skills as an experimenter and an engineer with natural intuitive attributes
combined with his determination to succeed, made him the man who “by magic”
took Hertzian waves out of the laboratory and into everyday lives and
applications; a real “businessman”, who knew how to make science and its
applications serve humanity.
The first experiments of the very young Marconi are still legendary: for
example radio communication at a distance of almost three kilometres, in the
summer of 1895, at his father’s villa of Pontecchio, which was confirmed by his
older brother Alfonso with the fateful gun shot. Unfortunately the first exciting
experience was followed by disillusions when facing crude reality. No one,
except Marconi’s Irish mother (Annie Jameson, daughter of the owner of the now
famous whiskey distillery), seemed to understand the potential of those
experiments. A demonstration was organised in Rome with the hope of attracting
financial backing from the Postal and Telegraph Service of the Italian
government. However, the small-minded bureaucratic mentality, then as now,
prevented politicians from seeing the signs of genius and progress in the ideas
of that young twenty-two year old. “Our telegraph works,” stated the Italian
minister of communications. “Why do we need a wireless telegraph?”
And so Marconi, just like many other Italian geniuses before and after
him, decided to go abroad. In 1896, Marconi went to England and on 2 June filed
a claim for the first patent for a wireless telegraph which used Hertzian
waves. Marconi was presented to the head engineer of the British Post Office,
who, in addition to providing him with the means for experiments and
demonstrations, put an assistant, George Kemp, at his disposal, who would serve
him faithfully for the rest of his life.
The demonstration held on Salisbury Plain with the members of the Armed
Forces led to a close cooperation between Marconi and Captain Jackson of the
Royal Navy; the latter (who later became Admiral Jackson, Commander of the
Royal Navy, during the First World War) saw the huge benefits that wireless
telegraphy could give the British fleet. The following year, Marconi made an
over-sea connection across the Bristol Channel (a distance of 14 km); later in
the year, he did so with a ship, at a greater distance.
Marconi, the businessman
With the continuously increasing communication distances (a few months
after a distance exceeding fifty kilometres between Bath and Salisbury was
accomplished), the time had come to start to develop Marconi’s apparatus
commercially. With this in mind, the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Ltd
was founded on 20 July 1891. The establishment of the company was entrusted to
an Irish cousin, Jameson Davis, who became its first director. The company had
a capital of one hundred thousand pounds: Marconi received sixty thousand
pounds through shares; forty thousand pounds of shares were issued and sold to
private investors through public subscription. Of the forty thousand pounds,
Marconi received fifteen thousand in cash for his patent, thus leaving the
company twenty five thousand as liquid capital.
In those days, Marconi was conducting demonstrations of his apparatus in
Italy to government representatives and the King and Queen. One of the
demonstrations took place between the arsenal of San Bartolomeo in La Spezia
and the cruiser San Martino at a distance of eighteen kilometres. As a result
of these demonstrations, the Minister of the Italian Navy announced that it
would adopt Marconi’s system. From then on, Marconi became a true businessman,
first buying the majority shareholding of the company and then immediately
seeing the assignment of the first order.
Over the following two years, it became clear that Marconi was the
driving force behind the new company. Each time he demonstrated his enterprise
by using his wireless telegraphy in situations which would receive maximum
press coverage. In January 1898, for example, he managed to send a
communication to London from Bournemouth, where Gladstone (who had been the
prime minister for many years) was dieing, and a snow storm had broken the
telegraph cables. In the summer of 1898, the Prince of Wales (who became King
Edward VII), convalescent due to an accident, was
onboard the royal yacht, Osborne, several miles from Queen Victoria’s
residence, at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight; the Queen requested news of
her son’s progress and Marconi made this possible, without interruption, by
installing his wireless system onboard the yacht and in the royal palace.
During the following sixteen days, 150 messages were exchanged and the papers
praised the system highly!
In 1899, official radio communications were established over the English
Channel and, with the consent of the French government, a telegraph station was
set up near Boulogne. Over these two years, various laboratories were built for
experiments at hotels on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight (where Marconi
and his assistants lived): Marconi installed radiotelegraphic stations in these
but, while the business developed, a greater number of permanent production
facilities became necessary; thus in 1899, some buildings were purchased in
Chelmsford, Essex. The first radiotelegraphic industry in the world was born
here. Twelve years later, a new plant was built in Chelmsford, destined to be
Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company headquarters for many years and where the
headquarters of GEC – Marconi Communications Ltd is
still to be found. Around the time of the first plant, the Wireless Telegraph
& Signal Co. was renamed Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company. This change
illustrates the authority and respect the name of Marconi commanded with the
general public (when the company was established in 1891, Marconi had pointedly
refused the proposal of calling it Marconi’s Patent Telegraph Co.).
Radio at sea
At that time the meaning and destiny of the word “radio” was clear to
just a small group of dreamers. In 1899, the system was installed and used with
impressive results onboard three ships during manoeuvres by the Royal Navy. It
was used in the war of South Africa and that year Marconi also landed in the
United States where his system was used for the commentary of the America’s Cup
and demonstrations were held at the US Naval Department too. In November,
Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company of America was founded, which later became
the powerful RCA.
It was Marconi’s conviction that wireless telegraphy could lead to huge
financial and personal benefits for the merchant navy and also to the
navigation companies, their crews and passengers, especially concerning safety
at sea. This belief came from the fact that communications on British soil were
a commercial monopoly, closely guarded by the Post Office, while ships could
have their own equipment at sea; hence ships could communicate between
themselves and furthermore establish communication between land and sea. As a
consequence, in 1900 a separate company was founded, the Marconi International
Marine Communication Company, whose aim was to manage an exclusive licence for
all maritime uses: it supplied the equipment to ships together with suitably
trained radio-operators. In 1900 Marconi obtained the famous patent 7777 for
tuned coupled circuits, whose development allowed stations to operate
simultaneously without interference from each other. The use of wireless
telegraphy apparatus at sea grabbed the headlines of the daily papers on many
occasions over the following years: the dramatic arrest of the notorious killer
Dr. Crippen and his lover Ethel Le Neve, which occurred thanks to a telegraph
message between the S.S. Montrose and New Scotland Yard in London, was of
particular note.
Two exciting occasions where the use of the wireless telegraphs was
decisive for the saving of human lives at sea were the disaster of the luxury
transatlantic liner, the Titanic, occurring during her maiden voyage, and the
successive fire of the transatlantic Volturno. In the case of the Titanic the
losses were considerable, but thanks to wireless telegraphy all of those who
were able to get aboard the lifeboats were saved by rescue ships guided to the
disaster scene thanks to radio communication. In the case of the Volturno,
which carried six hundred emigrants from Rotterdam to New York, many ships came
to her aid in the middle of the Atlantic, alerted by messages sent via radio
following the breakout of a fire onboard.
Transatlantic communications
It was the restrictions to the progress of communication caused by the
monopoly of the Post Office that changed Marconi’s opinion concerning
international and especially long distance communications: he was certain that
they were possible, despite the scientific opinion of the time according to
which the Earth’s curvature would make such communication impossible. For
example, between the United Kingdom and the United States there was the
equivalent of 240 kilometres of natural obstacles and water barriers, over
which it was believed radio waves could not pass.
Marconi, more determined and confident than ever, worked to prove his
convictions by sending radio signals across the Atlantic and convinced his
board of directors to support him in what scientists and the general public considered
a crazy idea. In Poldhu, Cornwall, land was purchased and towards the end of
the 1900s work began to build a new station that would be much more powerful
than to those built previously, as well as a complex antenna system. Marconi
chose Cape Cod, in Massachusetts (USA) for the second high-power station.
Everything was ready at the end of the summer of 1901. However, on 17 September
the worst storm in living memory struck the station. All the antennas collapsed
and the station was reduced to a pile of wood and tangled mass of wires.
Marconi had no intention of giving up though. Shortly after the destruction of
the antennas at Poldhu, he organized a team commanded by the trustworthy Kemp
to rebuild a temporary antenna system. Due to adverse atmospheric conditions,
Marconi decided to attempt reception not just from the Cape Cod station, but
also to attempt it with temporary apparatus on the nearest landfall,
Newfoundland.
He landed in Newfoundland on 27 November in complete secrecy together
with Kemp, another assistant, Paget, and a set of receiver apparatus, kites,
balloons, antenna wires and gas accessories. The experiment was limited to
one-way communication. The prospects were as gloomy as the Atlantic weather. On
9 December a cablegram was sent to Poldhu requesting that the letter “S” of the
Morse alphabet (three points) be transmitted without interruption, beginning on
11 December. On 10 December, an antenna was raised. The day arrived, the
transmission started as planned, using a power of about ten thousand watts.
Nothing that could be clearly identified as the letter ” S ” was heard. On the
12th the wind was still raging. Marconi was sitting by the receiver listening
carefully. Suddenly at 12:30 Newfoundland time, he passed the headset to Kemp
saying calmly: “Can you hear anything, Mr. Kemp?”
Kemp took the headset. Through the hubbub of electric static he could
hear the unmistakable rhythm of three beats followed by a pause; then another
three beats and a pause, and so on, repeated constantly, until after a while
the signal was lost again in the static. Marconi had a problem: the world
demanded more solid proof than he could offer. On that occasion he sent a
cablegram to his London office and two days later he delivered his version of
what happened to the international press. The world was sceptical about his
claim of having communicated without wires across the Atlantic. Not just the
daily press but also technical journals greeted his claim with reticence.
Alexander Graham Bell, the American businessman who must be acknowledged
for the industrial development of the invention of another Italian, Antonio
Meucci, stated on the subject: “I doubt that Marconi has done it. It is
impossible”. Perhaps Bell was sceptical because, if Marconi’s wireless communications
worked across the oceans, this would have dealt a lethal blow to the expensive
system of submarine cables laid by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company
(the giant AT&T). Thomas Alva Edison, one of the greatest American
inventors of the time, was much more generous in his judgment: “I am
staggered,” said Edison, “I would like to meet this young man who is so brave
as to attempt sending an electric wave across the Atlantic Ocean.” And when a
journalist asked him if he believed Marconi’s report, he answered: “If Marconi
said it is true, then it is.”
In any case Marconi returned to England to report to his directors and
shareholders in person and then proceeded to definitely show the world that
radio signals could cross the Atlantic by equipping a ship with purposely
designed receiving apparatus and travelling with the ship across the Atlantic,
so the messages from Poldhu were received and recorded during the night at
distances between 1550 and 2100 miles. Marconi then chose Glace Bay, Canada, as
the place for his new station, and in New York he registered Marconi’s Wireless
Telegraph Co. of America as a “Public Company”; the American rights of
Marconi’s inventions were transferred from the parent company for 50 thousand
pounds. From then onwards Marconi developed international communications and in
1906 he announced his dream, his ambitious and controversial plan to connect
the British Empire through a network of wireless communication stations.
Marconi’s belief in his ability was rock solid: in January 1911, on a
theatre programme which quoting Puck’s remark, “I’ll put a girdle around the
Earth in 40 minutes”, (taken from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) he
wrote the following words: “I’ll do it much more quickly”. After seven years of
political conflict and stiff opposition from the Post Office and the cable
companies, the government finally stipulated a contract with “Marconi” in 1913
but the coming war of 1914-18 and subsequent internal political conflicts
delayed the project until 1924. In the meanwhile Marconi and his colleagues,
concluding the experiments onboard the yacht, Elettra, had developed shortwave
directional transmissions which Marconi considered as potentially superior to
the long-wave high-power system, originally used. The announcement of his last
development confused the British government again, but since Canada, Australia,
South Africa and India had decided in its favour, it also agreed to adopt what
would become known as the “beam system”. Thus the foundations were laid for the
Imperial Wireless Chain, a revolution in global communications. In 1926 the
Canadian Beam breezed through the preliminary trials, followed in 1927 by three
other connections. In addition to the Imperial Wireless Chain, founded for the
Post Office and the Dominion Governments (i.e. the various British colonies),
Marconi Company built the stations to communicate with Argentina, Brazil, the
US, Egypt and Japan. These stations were integrated in the “Via Marconi” global
network.
Intuition and determination
Ironically, the immense success of the Imperial Wireless Chain turned
out to be a double-edged sword for Marconi. The threat of the “beam system” was
so great to the interests of the cables of the empire that in 1929, on the
request of the British Government and Dominions, Cable & Wireless Ltd. was
founded with the precise aim of taking away the investments, the patent and
traffic rights and the licenses from Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company and
the Cable Companies. Hence the ambitious dream of Marconi to develop his own
commercial telegraph network throughout the world fell to pieces. With the
establishment of Cable & Wireless, Marconi’s direct involvement in the
company stopped, although he continued his experimental research onboard the
Elettra and in Italy. His interest especially focused on experimenting the use
of microwaves (away ahead of his time) and in 1932 he installed the first
microwave telephone line which connected the Vatican City with the Pope’s
summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.
In addition to being an inventor and a businessman, Marconi was also a
man of insight, a great prophet of future developments. Already in 1916, he had
noted that short waves were reflected by obstacles along their journey. He then
expressed the idea that this phenomenon could create the basis for detecting
ships at sea. At a joint meeting of the IRE and the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers held on 20 June 1922, he concluded
with the following observations: “As initially demonstrated by Hertz, electric
waves can be completely reflected by conductor bodies. In some of my trials I
noticed the effect of the reflection and the deviation of these waves due to
metal objects at a distance of a few miles. I think it should be possible to
design apparatuses by which a ship can radiate or project a divergent beam of
these rays in any direction desired. If these rays meet any metal object, such
as another steamer or ship, they would be reflected towards a receiver screened
by a local transmitter on the transmitting ship, thus immediately detecting the
presence and direction of another ship in fog or bad weather. An additional
advantage of this device would be that it would be able to detect the presence
and the direction of ships, even when these ships were not equipped with
radio.”
Talking about future telecommunication developments in 1927 he stated:
“I am known as a man who deals with what is feasible and possible and not
utopia or fantasy. Concerning the claims of a saturation point, a limit to the
progress of radio, there is no limit to distance, hence there can be no limit
to the development of radio”. Today’s communication via satellite and radio
astronomy certainly would not have surprised him!
His inventiveness, intuition and determination are the real substance of
which businessmen are made. But Marconi had another fundamental characteristic
for success in business: he chose and recruited highly prestigious scientists
and engineers for his team. An example was a respected doctor, later to become
Sir Ambrose Fleming, professor of electric technology at University College
London, who in 1900 was appointed by Marconi to be scientific councillor of the
company and supplied the main contribution to the design of the high powered
station at Poldhu (in 1904 Fleming developed the first thermo-ionic valve, the
diode). Furthermore, at the beginning of the 1900s Marconi founded Marconi
College, near Chelmsford, where engineers were instructed on the new radio
technologies. It is worth remembering that Marconi was ahead of his time
compared to the scientific teachings then and hence the company could not rely
on engineering courses held at universities.
At its founder’s request, the Marconi Company began important
developments in other fields, such as radio communication on planes
(experiments started in 1907) and the beginning of broadcasting in Great
Britain, immediately after the First World War. After a long battle with the
authorities on broadcasting, in 1922 the company founded “The British
Broadcasting Company” which, after growing continuously for four years, was
taken over by the Government in 1926 and its name changed to “The British
Broadcasting Corporation”, otherwise known as the BBC.
Thus once again politics intervened to stop Marconi enjoying the fruit of his
pioneering work and investments. In that period Marconi was completely involved
in the global battle for telecommunications and did not personally play a
decisive role in the development of broadcasting. Nevertheless, on another
occasion, his intuition and anticipation of future prospects were clear in a
message he delivered in 1922: “It is my conviction and lifelong hope that these
Marconiphones (Marconi receivers), the latest development of the principles of
my invention, may be of great benefit to the general public, providing each
house with a new method of education and entertainment”.
Conclusions
It is necessary to make some conclusive observations at this point. At a
time of such a decisive and critical transition for the national economy and
the world as a whole, Marconi seems to offer us an example of evocative worth
and power. We have still not entirely left the collective intoxication of the
new economy, which sang of rewards and enticing promises of easy and safe
earnings. The business world watches the challenges of globalization with a
mixture of doubt and fear and seems to question itself about its own informing
principles and its own future. In this panorama, full of opportunities but also
surrounded by hundreds of uncertainties, Marconi offers us a business model
which is relevant more than ever, based on courage, magnanimity, the desire to
create, the powerful capacity to see and evoke the future and, especially, on
that kingly ingredient that unfortunately get rarer and rarer: ideas.
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