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Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention Of The 19th Century & The Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked A Revolution

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Thomas Edison, who was a man who was not easily impressed, once quipped about Guglielmo Marconi that he "delivered more than he promised." This statement demonstrates two of Marconi's most significant traits: he was modest and extremely hard working. Marconi was the first to admit that his work was based on both the theories and the inventions of others. He also acknowledged that he didn't understand the reason his own inventions worked. He believed, contrary to many of his contemporaries, that "radio" waves could travel great distances. Many other people thought the waves could not be transmitted to a receiver that was beyond the horizon line...that at longer distances the waves would travel off into outer space. Based on this belief, with no theoretical underpinning, Marconi kept things simple: he built taller transmitters and he kept making them more powerful. His goal was to transmit electrical signals in Morse Code that could be received across the Atlantic Ocean. He eventually succeeded in this, and gained worldwide fame and popularity when wireless telegraphy, after being used by ships in distress at sea, resulted in the saving of many lives. Marconi was also an astute businessman, rather than a starry eyed inventor.(He amassed a very healthy fortune, perhaps equal to $200-$250 million today.) He was an early master of public relations- for example, using wireless to report on important yacht races. Mr. Weightman doesn't ignore the less savory aspects of the inventor: Marconi's womanizing and obsession with work resulted in the termination of his first marriage. As previously mentioned, Marconi was very weak on theory. He also failed to see the commercial possibilities of radio. That was left to others, such as Lee de Forest, to develop. While Mr. Weightman is a little skimpy on biographical depth (I never quite felt I understood what made Marconi tick), he is great on interesting details...for example, he explains how wireless was used to help capture the infamous murderer Dr. Crippen, and he also tells how Orthodox Russian priests once almost destroyed Marconi equipment because they wanted to anoint it with holy water! The book is meant for the lay reader, and the scientific detail is kept to a minimum. Very enjoyable.

The story of the development of wireless technology is complicated and surrounded by claim and counter claim. Marconi is undoubtedly the central figure of this story but the main characters are interwoven like the twisted pair wires that were replaced by the increasing use of telegraph communications.

Einstein has said that scientific advance is opaque with foresight, transparent with hindsight, and this book amply illustrates the point. It is easy to look back on the breakthroughs of Guiglielmo Marconi and belittle the impact. Yet much of the enormous advances at the end of the 20th century would not have been possible without Marconi (or rather the technology STARTED by Marconi's discoveries). Marconi was a strange mixture of modern and ancient, and did not understand the theoretical background of his advances. Nor does the reader need to understand the science of signal transmission to thoroughly enjoy the book. It is interesting and enlightening to see the attempts to rationalise how `radio' worked, particularly by some of his contemporaries. I suspect that some of our own imperfect understandings will be viewed with similar wonder when viewed from the other side of lucid explanations.

The story is generally well told, and is particularly effective when describing three Atlantic dramas in the years just before the First World War. The passengers rescued from the steam ships Republic and Titanic owed their rescue to both the technology, and to the seriously dedicated wireless operators. Indeed, the operators from the Titanic only ceased transmitting about 20 minutes before the vessel went down, and one of the pair perished. In the third drama, Dr Crippen was apprehended in New York after `escaping' on a trans-Atlantic voyage - the ship's captain recognised the man who had murdered his wife, and the `Marconi men' on board informed the authorities. Both English and French newspapers published the `chase', charting the positions of both Crippen's vessel, and that of the following Inspector Drew (in a faster vessel, which arrived first in New York).

Marconi's advances shine through the pages of the book, but even though it is not dwelt upon, Marconi as a man receives very much less favourable coverage. I suppose if he had been a `better' person, he would not have made the breakthroughs of which we are all grateful.

Peter Morgan (morganp@supanet.com)

This book, at 291 pages, is a quick read. It can be read in about two hours. We learn that Marconi's main contribution was to combine Heinrich Hertz's invention of radio waves with Oliver Lodge's invention of the coherer. We learn of Marconi's discovery of radio waves bouncing off the upper atmosphere, an effect essential for trans-Atlantic radio waves (paves 53-55, 258). We learn of Marconi's "spark method" which worked better than Edison's jumping current method. We learn that it was actually David Hughes (pages 97-98) and Oliver Heaviside (pages 128-131), not Marconi, who built the first wireless. We also learn that Nathan Stubblefield was the inventor of a wireless that could transmit not just Morse code, but also voices and music.

Much of the book tells about Marconi's efforts at building higher aerials and scouting out locations to build aerials, e.g., on various ships, in Cape Cod, Newfoundland, or Santa Catalina Island. In fact, this is the major thrust of the book: scouting out locations for building aerials. The book should not have been called "Signor Marconi's Magic Box," since we learn nothing about the "spark method" or the "coherer" beyond their names. Instead, the book should have been called "Signor Marconi Builder of Aerials." The word "patent" occurs 19 times in the book, but here the word patent is just used in passing, and we learn nothing about the patents, or how they represented improvements over the earlier state of the radio art. "Patent" does not even occur in the index.

The book spends a good deal of time utilizing literary devices, especially the literary device of describing the weather, and the literary device of naming personalities with little or no direct relevance to Marconi. For example, we are told that "on a misty morning three days later a Russian hospital ship sighted another vessel" (page 200). We learn that "the men who were working ran out into the snow in mad rejoicing" (page 146). We find that "day after day through the hot summer months of 1895 . . ."(page 16). We are told that "tens of thousands of chimneys filled the air with the sooty haze" (page 21). We read that "this was a deeply romantic corner of England, a treacherous rocky coast. . . where people still talked of lost bounties of wrecked . . . Spanish galleons" (page 72). We also read that "outside, his men braved the icy winds which blew small icebergs into Glace Bay" (page 100). Moreover, we learn about "out on the snowy wastes of Brant Rock . . ." (page 208). Additionally, we read that "in the summer heat the stony earth shimmers" (page 281) and that "a storm blew up from the northwest" (page 264). The author is a confirmed name-dropper. We learn the names of Marconi's competitors, and the names of Marconi's love interests, literary figures, sports figures, and political figures of the time (e.g., King Victor Emmanuel; Reginald Fessenden; Nevil Maskelyne; Frank Fayant; Alexander Popov; Gordon Bennett; Eugene Ducretet; Inez Milholland; Thomas Lipton; Lionel James; Rossini; Chopin; Arthur Conan Doyle; Frederick Treves; Amos Dolbear; Alaxandre Dumas; Nellie Melba; Beatrice O'Brien; Edmund Gurney; Frederic Myers; Leonore Piper; George Bernard Shaw; Joseph Pulitzer; and Cristina Bezza-Scali; Rudyard Kipling; Bob Fitzsimmons; Jim Jeffries; Jack Dempsey; Henry McClure; just to name a few). On and on and on goes the list of irrelevant names. The book devotes atleast ten times more space describing Marconi's romantic interests than describing the engineers who work for Marconi.

To conclude, the author Gavin Weightman provides us with a book having a misleading title (Signor Marconi's Magic Box) and a misleading subtitle (The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century). The book contains only a moderate amount of interesting material, but a huge amount of fluff. The book does not explain the nature of a coherer, a Herzian wave, or the spark method, and reveals very little about Marconi's collaborators and coworkers, essentially nothing about Marconi's business partners, and essentially nothing about what Marconi had actually invented. In striking contrast is Tom Lewis' book Empire of the Air. Tom Lewis covers the history of radio with the insight expected of somebody who is an electrical engineer having a J.D. and an M.B.A. Five stars to Tom Lewis' book Empire of the Air.

This book is easily read and handles technical issues without getting bogged down in detail. An amateur radio enthusiast would be left hungering for more on the devices, antennas, etc. that Marconi used, but those who are not familiar with the principles of radio should find this book very satisfying. Hertz, Maxwell, Heaviside, DeForest are all here but, as the author makes clear, Marconi himself had no idea about the science underlying his success but was persistent nonetheless. The author ventures into personalities and sensations of the period that will keep you moving through the chapters. Imagine projecting news headlines onto the clouds with high powered lights! Weightman will tell you about it. I had no idea that there was a successful broadcasting service by telephone in Budapest before 1900, with music and news. Threading it all together is Marconi's remarkable life of staying ahead of the pack until the development of the electron tube. You'll get a wonderful sense of the optimism, excitement and wonder of the pre-WWI period in a well told story. I closed the book amazed that all that I had read took place only 100 years, such a short time, ago.

From the title, you might suppose this book to be a history of early wireless, with an emphasis on Marconi's work. And so it is, to some degree. It is much more a biography of Marconi, for whom Weightman has an evident fondness. But it is a weak biography, in that it does not delve into Marconi's life too deeply, or too long. Indeed, the book effectively ends (or rather, just stops) at the First World War, with a final chapter or two about the last years of Marconi's life 20 years later. And it's a somewhat incomplete story of early wireless, concentrating (understandably) mostly on Marconi's work, with only glimpses of the advances made by so many other pioneers. Still, it is an interesting and informative read, fleshing out the bare bones of the earliest years of an emerging technology. It just left me wondering what happened to the second half of the book.

This is a history of the early years of wireless communication - centering around the late 1800s to early 1900s. This is not a biography of Marconi, although he is indeed the central figure and many aspects of his life, both personal and professional, are featured. The detailed technical aspects of wireless apparatus of the time are not discussed, that is, the technically-mided reader would not be able to reproduce the wireless apparatus of the epoch strictly from the information gleaned from this book. The focus is mainly on the overall progress made in the field, including Marconi's tireless efforts, his competitors, the effects of wireless communication on various industries, on people in general and on society. The book is very well-written and is very difficult to put down - it's the type of book where the last page unexpectedly creaps up on you. It provides an excellent glimps of life and times in that exciting period where technology was advancing by leaps and bounds. I highly recommend it!

This is a great Biography of Marconi, who is the father of radio. I never read Marconi's story before - it was well worth the wait - the author did a fantastic job with Mr. Marconi's life and his adventures with wireless radio.

Surprised that the book fails on a major point: to talk about the highly supportable contention that Marconi stole Tesla's technological ideas, since Marconi visited Tesla and since Tesla was such a "businessman innocent" that he let people root around in his papers for ideas as a friendship gesture.

Still, an intersting read on the early 20th century through various technological vingnettes about the effects of radio that you would find no where else--until a better book is published of course, in my opinion.