Revolutionary of Radio W

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS

TECHNOLOGY Revolutionary of radio W. Bernard Carlson hails a life of driven communications pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.

s inventor of the wireless telegraph, head Italy’s national research council; later, Guglielmo Marconi was a central fig- he became president of the new academy of ure in the development of twentieth- science. Using records recently discovered in Acentury communications. Yet how should we the government archives in Rome, Raboy pro- view him? As Nobel laureate? Entrepreneur? vides a detailed account of Marconi’s involve- Fascist? In his grand, wide-ranging biogra- ment in Fascism, including his tacit approval phy Marconi, Marc Raboy reveals a complex of excluding Jewish scientists from the acad- individual who played all these parts. By emy. In the 1930s, Marconi conducted radio examining them, Raboy seeks to show how experiments from his yacht, Elettra, and built

radio came to be intertwined with big busi- a powerful radio station for the Vatican. He AGENCY/GETTY GENERAL PHOTOGRAPHIC ness, imperialism and global politics in ways died in 1937, and various companies contin- that still define electronic communications. ued to use his name until Marconi plc was Marconi was born to privilege in 1874: his purchased by Ericsson in 2006. father was an Italian aristocrat, his mother Raboy superbly traces every twist and turn a member of the Jameson Irish-whiskey of Marconi’s life, showing us his influences, dynasty. Educated in England and Italy, Mar- business strategies and shrewd management coni decided at age 20 to study the electro- of his own public persona. Raboy skilfully magnetic waves predicted by James Clerk locates his activities in the context of commu- Maxwell in the 1860s and verified experi- nications policy, the arms race between Brit- mentally by German physicist Heinrich Hertz ain and Germany, and popular culture. But some 20 years later. Marconi wanted to use Guglielmo Marconi on his yacht, Elettra, in 1922. has he made the case that Marconi networked these waves to develop a wireless telegraph the world, as his book’s subtitle claims? He system. He sent messages across his father’s receiving in St John’s, Newfoundland, a mes- asserts that Marconi envisioned global com- estate by using a Hertzian spark-gap trans- sage sent from the Cornwall station. munications from the outset, but provides mitter to generate radio waves, which were Marconi’s enterprise flourished, selling little early evidence to support this. I suspect detected by a version of the ‘coherer’ invented wireless apparatus to shipping companies that, like other inventors, Marconi was mostly by French physicist Éduoard Branly (iron fil- and navies around the world. Anxious to worried about getting his apparatus to work ings in a glass tube lined up in response to the prevent the British from monopolizing the and finding customers. The big global vision waves). Marconi’s breakthrough was in con- new technology, German emperor Wilhelm II came in the 1920s, with his company’s success necting these two devices to elevated aerials. supported the creation of the company Tele in transmitting worldwide. To commercialize this invention, Marconi’s funken to advance German radio inven- Raboy is also curiously indifferent to details mother took him to England in 1896 to con- tors, and convened the first international of the technology or Marconi’s rivals. One of fer with her family, as well as William Preece, telecommunications conference in Berlin Marconi’s early breakthroughs was learning chief engineer of the British Post Office. A in 1903. The Germans wanted all ships to be how to tune circuits using ‘jigger’ coils. Raboy cousin, Henry Jameson Davis, helped Mar- able to communicate with all shore stations, offers no explanation of how this invention coni to secure patents, launch the Wireless whereas the British insisted that the Marconi worked or how tuning allowed Marconi to Telegraph and Signal Company (later Mar- system should be accessible solely to Marconi send private messages from one point to coni’s Wireless Telegraph Company) and seek customers. Drawing on his background as a another. Would we settle for a biography of capital. Marconi concentrated on increasing scholar of ethics, media and communica- Pablo Picasso that didn’t explain Cubism? transmission distances; he had sent messages tions, Raboy effectively traces how Marconi Similarly, Marconi’s rivals — including across the English Channel by early 1899. and his managers manoeuvred through this Oliver Lodge in Britain, Tesla in the United Despite media acclaim and rising share emergent world of communications policy. States, and Adolf Slaby and Karl Ferdinand prices, Marconi’s company wasn’t turning Marconi became a scientific celebrity. Braun in Germany — are quickly dismissed a profit. While his board dithered, Marconi He won a share in the 1909 Nobel Prize in by Raboy. Yet Marconi was well aware that he decided to take a dramatic step to capture the Physics. He served as Italy’s head of radio was racing against these competitors: that is ship-to-shore communication market. The operations during the First World War, and why he vigorously challenged them through Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla had in 1919 represented the country at the Paris patent litigation, advertising and newspa- promised to send a wireless message across Peace Conference called by the Allied victors. per interviews. Our networked world didn’t the Atlantic (W. P. McCray Nature 497, 562– Marconi found the negotiations frustrating, spring from the mind of one genius, but from 563; 2013). Perhaps taking a cue from that, concluding that handling nature was easier a social network of talented rivals, all contrib- Marconi began working with British electrical than handling human nature. With his fellow uting to the electronic communications that engineer John Ambrose Fleming (who later Italian delegates, Marconi was also incensed today both enrich and complicate our lives. ■ invented the vacuum that the Allies refused to cede to Italy the city tube), to build a pow- Marconi: The Man of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) and the Dal- W. Bernard Carlson is the Joseph Who Networked erful transmitting sta- the World matian coast. He came away from the confer- L. Vaughan Professor of Humanities at the tion in Cornwall, UK. MARC RABOY ence sympathetic to Italian nationalism. University of Virginia in Charlottesville and In December 1901, Oxford University That led him to support the Fascists, and author of Tesla. Marconi beat Tesla by Press: 2016. in 1927 Benito Mussolini appointed him to e-mail: [email protected]