Signor Marconi's Magic Box: How an Amateur Inventor Defied Scientists and Began the Radio Revolution - Hardcover

Weightman, Gavin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007130058 ISBN 13: 9780007130054

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2003

Synopsis

The intriguing story of how wireless was invented by Guglielmo Marconi – and how it amused Queen Victoria, saved the lives of the Titanic survivors, tracked down criminals and began the radio revolution.

Wireless was the most fabulous invention of the 19th century: the public thought it was magic, the popular newspapers regarded it as miraculous, and the leading scientists of the day (in Europe and America) could not understand how it worked. In 1897, when the first wireless station was established by Marconi in a few rooms of the Royal Needles Hotel on the Isle of Wight, nobody knew how far these invisible waves could travel through the ‘ether’, carrying Morse Coded messages decipherable at a receiving station. (The definitive answer was not discovered till the 1920s, by which time radio had become a sophisticated industry filling the airwaves with a cacaphony of sounds – most of it American.)

Marconi himself was the son of an Italian father and an Irish mother (from the Jameson whiskey family); he grew up in Italy and was fluent in Italian and English, but it was in England that his invention first caught on. Marconi was in his early twenties at the time (he died in 1937). With the ‘new telegraphy’ came the real prospect of replacing the network of telegraphic cables that criss-crossed land and sea at colossal expense. Initially it was the great ships that benefited from the new invention – including the Titanic, whose survivors owed their lives to the wireless.

About this title

About the Author

Gavin Weightman is an experienced television documentary-maker (producer/director/writer), journalist and author of many books such as The Making of Modern London: 1815–1914, The Making of Modern London: 1914–1939, London River, Picture Post Britain and Rescue: A History of the British Emergency Services (Boxtree). His first book for HarperCollins, The Frozen Water Trade, was published in February 2002.

From the Back Cover

'The story of the wireless, and the remarkable man who invented it.'

On a winters evening in the East End of London in 1896, an unassuming young Italian gave the first public demonstration of a device he had created in the attic of his family home near Bologna. It consisted of two wooden boxes, one of which could apparently transmit messages to the other. Many of those in the audience suspected that they were witnessing a mere conjuring trick. None can have guessed that Signor Marconi's magic box would be regarded as the most remarkable invention of the nineteenth century, and that he himself would become one of the most famous men in the world.

Soon his wireless sets were sending messages to and from Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight. Within a few years ships at sea were able for the first time to remain in constant contact with the land. The infamous murderer Dr Crippen would be brought to justice as a result of wireless, and the survivors of the 'Titanic' would owe their lives to Marconi's invention.

As well as the story of a remarkable innovator, 'Signor Marconi's Magic Box' is a history of the colourful early days of wireless, when the mysterious new medium attracted many unscrupulous charlatans and outlandish theorists. No one – not even Marconi himself – really understood how it worked. Many eminent scientists believed it might bring messages from beyond the grave, while others remained convinced that the whole thing was a confidence trick.

Gavin Weightman, author of 'The Frozen Water Trade', has written a gripping account of a seminal scientific discovery, and of its wide-ranging consequences for future generations.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007130058
• ISBN 13: 9780007130054
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336