Читать книгу Marconi My Beloved - Maria C. Marconi - Страница 37

From the first day of our marriage my life with Guglielmo was spent mostly on board his yacht the Elettra sailing in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the North Sea. I remember our cruises off the coast of England. We usually set sail from Southampton and sailed along the lovely coast of Cornwall which was one of our favourite places. We spent most of our time on board but sometimes we left the yacht in a harbour or cove for a few hours to go and visit friends who lived in old manors or in splendid country houses.

We often dropped anchor in Poole Harbour, not far from the places where years before Guglielmo had carried out very important experiments and transmissions. We went ashore in the motorboat to the jetty belonging to Lord Montagu. After walking through a beautiful wood we found ourselves in front of a XIII Century Abbey which had been converted into a country house. We were welcomed by Lord Montagu himself, smiling and jovial. We spent happy hours with him and his friends and in the evening we returned to the Elettra and continued our voyage.

Guglielmo pointed out a few rare palms growing here and there along the coast. He liked the warm climate of Cornwall which was milder than that of the rest of England. After our stay in those pleasant surroundings we spent months and months in the fogs of London. Although Guglielmo was half English he had an inborn longing for the sun. And yet his scientific work, his experiments and his important responsibilities with the Marconi Company in London meant that for around forty years he spent most of his time in northern climes. It was only after our marriage that he began to return to Italy frequently and feel a closer link with the land of his birth.

When we disembarked from the Elettra to visit our friends we would find our very nice Russian chauffeur Bindoff, who had followed our route by road, waiting with the beautiful Rolls Royce to take us wherever we had planned to go. We would drive to join our friends in their stately homes, those unforgettable monuments to past centuries. We often visited Constance Cornwallis-West, the first wife of the Duke of Westminster, who was always delighted to see us and gave us a great welcome. Although she was no longer a young woman she was still beautiful, like her sister the Princess of Pless.

We sometimes went as far as Lizard Head in Cornwall and disembarked to visit the Poldhu Hotel which was on a sheer cliff on a promontory overlooking the ocean. Guglielmo had spent many months there in 1900 and 1901 while he was building the radio-transmitting station of Poldhu right behind the hotel on the cliffs by the seashore. He often spoke to me about that exciting time. He was only twenty-seven years old! His audacious plan was to send the first message across the Atlantic between Cornwall in England and the American continent. The Poldhu radio station had just been completed when the antenna system was destroyed by a violent storm. “I wasn’t discouraged”, Guglielmo told me with a smile. “It was all for the best because I set to work again at once and put up a new experimental antenna which gave very satisfactory results”.

In 1901 he also built a very large radio station on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He arrived at Cape Cod with his assistants Mr. Kemp and Mr. Vyvyan. First he considered Barnstable but it was too far inland. Then he decided on Highland Light but the local people were suspicious and refused to sell him any land to build his station. Finally he was able to buy a piece of land at South Wellfleet on a high headland of dunes facing the Atlantic. There was nothing between it and the station at Poldhu but the Atlantic Ocean. He set up his headquarters at a boarding house, the Holbrook House in Wellfleet. The natives of Cape Cod predicted that the circular aerial system of twenty 200 foot masts would be blown down in the first Atlantic gale. They were proved right when the South Wellfleet station was completely destroyed in a violent storm. There was no hope for the time being of transmitting between Poldhu and Cape Cod and Guglielmo decided to move to Newfoundland. He had already spent months sailing along the Atlantic coasts in search of the most suitable promontory for his radio transmissions. He landed at Saint John’s, Newfoundland, the nearest point to Poldhu. He was received by the Governor Sir Cavendish Boyle and the Premier Sir Robert Bond.

Guglielmo immediately set up a rudimentary radio-receiving station on a hill near the sea, called “Signal Hill”. His two most trusted assistants Mr. Kemp and Mr. Paget had accompanied him from London. A stone-walled cabin panelled inside in wood was put at his disposal. By now it was winter. The building was surrounded by snow and ice but inside it was well-equipped and heated and they were very warmly dressed. Guglielmo had a table in the cabin for his instruments where he spent many hours of the day and night studying and making experiments. The North winds blew, freezing and violent. Guglielmo had suspended the antenna in the air using balloons which were destroyed by the storm. So he thought of holding up the antenna with a kite but this too was blown away. Undismayed, he immediately had another sent up in its place.

He was very young at that time and attempting to do what others had not even dared to imagine. Failure was out of the question. Finally his enthusiasm and determination were rewarded; he heard the signal of the letter “S” for the first time, sent across the ocean from the distant transmitter of Poldhu. That day, 12^th December 1901, Guglielmo sat listening in at the Newfoundland radio-station. He had not informed the Press because he did not want any publicity. An assistant at Poldhu in Cornwall was ready to transmit the agreed signal. In between lay the Atlantic, a distance of one thousand eight hundred miles, thought by others to be insurmountable.

It was twelve thirty when Guglielmo heard three brief clicks in rapid succession, faint but clear. He passed the ear-phone to his assistant and asked: “Do you hear anything Mr Kemp?” “Of course!” came the reply. “It is the letter “S”. Guglielmo later recorded the following words on a gramophone record: “Then I knew that I had been right. The electro-magnetic waves sent from Poldhu reached the other side of the Atlantic, serenely ignoring the terrestrial curvature which according to some incredulous people should have been an unsurmountable obstacle; I realised then that the day was not far off when I would be able to send complete messages across the continents and the oceans. At that moment long distance radio-telegraphy was born.”

When Guglielmo heard the first signal that came from Poldhu, he was filled with an indescribable happiness. He was absolutely certain that he would succeed. He often told me so: “I never had a moment of discouragement or doubt. I was quite ready to stay there in the snow, putting up with all that discomfort for a long time until I finally reached my goal”. This was how he always acted; he followed his ideas through with enormous perseverance and determination. I knew how tenacious my husband could be and I never had any doubts that he would succeed in whatever he resolved to do.

Whenever he spoke to me about “Signal Hill’ at Saint John’s Newfoundland and the moment when he received the sound of the letter “S” across the Atlantic, Guglielmo relived the incredible emotion he had felt. His face lit up and he looked youthful and full of enthusiasm. He realized that he had cancelled the great distances which separated the old world from the new and brought the people of the two continents closer together. He looked to the future. He was perfectly aware of the immense value of his invention and proud of the benefits it would bring to humanity. However, in spite of this, he was modest and altruistic. He was like the great men of the past who made a name for themselves with their works of genius without thought for the personal gain that these would bring them.

Guglielmo told me that the Canadian government immediately understood the importance of his discovery. The Anglo American Telegraph Company had threatened court action over the infringement of its monopoly on all telegraphic business in Newfoundland and rather than challenge the Company’s monopoly Marconi decided to withdraw from the colony. The Canadian Minister of Finance, Sir William S. Fielding invited him to continue his experiments in Canada, assuring him of the Canadian government’s co-operation and financial support. The Canadians knew that his transmissions across the Atlantic would help their ships and facilitate relations with England.

The day after the first transmission across the Atlantic the story was on the front page of all the newspapers and Guglielmo was described as “the wizard of space”. The “New York Times” wrote: “Marconi’s initial success captures our imagination. All men of intellect hope profoundly that the Wireless will soon show that it is not a scientific toy but a system of ordinary and everyday use. Men of science point out the obstacles, obstacles that are generally declared to be insurmountable; but the first triumph is a hope for future conquests”.

While many men of science were indeed skeptical and refused to believe that he had actually heard the signal from Poldhu, Professor Michael Pupin at Columbia University believed him and stated: “According to the newspapers I have read, the signals were weak but this is unimportant--the distance has been over come, now they just have to perfect the transmission equipment. Marconi has definitely proved that the curvature of the earth is not an obstacle for wireless telegraphy. We can only regret the fact that many so-called scientists have tried to take away from him and his assistants the merit and benefits of the work to which they have every right”. Elihu Thomson, one of the most important pioneers of electricity in America wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine “Electric World”, T. Comerford Martin, affirming his complete faith in Marconi. Many sceptics changed their minds after reading this letter.

Guglielmo had happy memories of his arrival in New York where he received high praise from the Government and Press. Many scientists and personalities congratulated him. A great banquet was given in Guglielmo’s honour in the Astor Gallery of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York on 13^th January, 1902, under the patronage of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and organized by “Electric World” and a group of scientists and business men. There were more than three hundred guests at the banquet while a huge crowd gathered on the balconies above the great dining hall. On the wall behind the table of honour hung a plaque with “Marconi” spelt out in electric light bulbs. To the right of the table another plaque said “Poldhu” while on the left was written “St. John’s”. Between these three sparkling words hung light bulbs which twinkled on and off giving the “S” sign of the Morse Code.

At the end of the banquet Martin read out the letters and telegrams which the organizing committee had received. Edison wrote: “I am sorry not to be present to offer my congratulations to Marconi. I would like to meet that young man who has had the monumental audacity to attempt and to succeed in jumping an electric wave across the Atlantic”. When Guglielmo rose to his feet to thank those present he was filled with happiness and emotion. He thanked the American Institution of Electrical Engineers and expressed his “honour to be amongst so many eminent men whose names are familiar in the whole world”. He modestly acknowledged what he owed to the scientists who had come before him in the study of electric waves. He spoke about his experiments at Signal Hill and his 7777 (four sevens) patent which he had taken out on 16^th April, 1900 and which would make it possible to improve the transmissions, saying: “Thanks to the experiments and improvements we have made, the messages can be read only when the receiver and the transmitter have been tuned”. The only mention he made of his problems with the cable companies were the following words: “Laying the underwater cables costs so much that the telegraph companies have to impose very high charges for the service. My system will lower the costs a great deal”. He ended his speech with: “I drink to the health of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers”.

The dinner was a triumph for Guglielmo and the next day the New York Times wrote in its editorial: “Marconi’s words were so modest, so lacking in any exaggeration for commercial ends, so generous in recognizing his debt towards the pioneers of research whose path he has followed, so frank in giving credit to the alive and the dead and nevertheless so cautious in giving advance notice of the developments of the work he is carrying out that all those present felt obliged to give Marconi not only the honour of his discovery but also the higher honour which is due to him who puts the truth before every jealousy and professional rivalry. From the laurel crown fashioned for his head he took branches to make garlands also for all his predecessors and colleagues in the study of electric waves and this spontaneous gift has enriched rather than impoverished him”.

In a letter to The Times of London Professor Ambrose Fleming wrote: “When one thinks that those dots and dashes are the result of electric wave trains travelling at the speed of light in infinite space, picked up by the thin wire of an antenna, automatically severed and translated by two pieces of apparatus into intelligible messages in different languages, the wonder of it all cannot but strike the imagination”.

In Canada, Guglielmo founded the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, which was controlled by the Marconi Company of London. He was delighted to hear the news that Thomas Edison had bought shares in his company.

Alexander Graham Bell had become a friend of Guglielmo’s and had told him that he could use some land belonging to him on the beach of Beinn Breagh for his new radio station; however, Guglielmo had to refuse the offer, because he realized it was too far inland from the Atlantic to allow him to transmit across the ocean. Guglielmo visited different places along the Canadian coast accompanied by the Canadian personalities of the day. It was still winter. The weather could not have been worse; snow, rain and strong winds reduced visibility almost to nothing. In the month of March, 1902 he finally found the most suitable geographic position to install a new radio station on the island of Cape Breton at Table Head a locality situated a mile away from Glace Bay which received great economic benefits from this, changing it from an agricultural town to an important commercial centre.

The radio station at Table Head became larger and three times more powerful than the one at Poldhu. All the radio stations were built on the Atlantic coasts and were thus always exposed to the danger of storms and winter gales. The unfavourable climate was one of the greatest problems for the radio stations. Guglielmo regularly sailed across the ocean to check that everything worked and to improve the transmissions; the yacht’s radio station became his own personal laboratory. In this way he maintained the long-distance contact between the transmitting and receiving stations, built on two promontories on either side of the Atlantic.

Guglielmo told me that his life at that time was particularly busy; he personally supervised the building of the new radio stations, just as he chose all his assistants himself. He was full of optimism and enthusiasm and he did everything he could to inspire the same feelings in the people who helped him. Mr. Vyvyen worked for a long time in Canada; he was in charge of the radio stations during Guglielmo’s absence. In an article he wrote about my husband, he said: “Only those who have worked with Marconi throughout these four years realize the wonderful courage he showed under frequent disappointments, the extra-ordinary fertility of his mind in inventing new methods to displace others found faulty, and his willingness to work, often for sixteen hours at a time, when any interesting development was being tested.” One of Guglielmo’s characteristics was his ability to choose the right person for each job. He and Vyvyan worked together hour after hour at the Poldhu, Clifden and Table Head radio stations. Guglielmo was known as an approachable person who had faith in those who worked for him. He thought sincerity was very important, but he was also sensitive enough to know when it was better to keep quiet.

Here, by the way, I should like to mention that Guglielmo spent the summer of 1902 on board the ship, the Carlo Alberto. Sailing between Russia and North Africa, he carried out tests on the “magnetic detector”, a technological jewel he had invented which was unaffected by the ship’s movement but so sensitive that it could pick up even the faintest electric waves. In October of the same year he was once again on board the Carlo Alberto, which was to take him from England to Cape Breton in Canada. He perfected his magnetic detector while he was in constant contact with Poldhu. When he arrived in the town of Glace Bay he was met by a myriad of boats and hundreds of people who had come to welcome him, including his loyal assistants, Mr Kemp, Mr Paget and Mr Vyvyan. The Carlo Alberto continued its voyage and anchored in the port of Sydney; here, too, Guglielmo was received with great enthusiasm and gratitude by the local press and by the members of the Sebastian Cabot Society, an important Canadian association.

Canada still feels a debt of gratitude to Guglielmo because his invention gave work to the inhabitants of the island of Cape Breton both to guarantee the constant functioning of his radio stations and to construct and perfect the equipment he invented. For his part, my husband was grateful to the Canadian government and the people of Cape Breton. When he spoke to me about those years, Guglielmo made me feel the great emotion he had felt every time he crossed the Atlantic and admired the natural beauties of the Canadian coasts when they were lit up by the summer sun.

In January, 1903 Marconi arrived on Cape Cod where the South Wellfleet station had been rebuilt with a new set of towers supporting a “V” shaped aerial, modelled on the ones at Poldhu and Table Head. He established a radio link to send messages from the Cape Cod station to Poldhu via Table Head and viceversa. In spite of the bad winter weather, on 19^th January1903 Guglielmo successfully transmitted a message from President Roosevelt to King Edward VII. The signal from Poldhu acknowledging reception of the message did not come back to Cape Cod via Table Head as expected but directly from Poldhu to Cape Cod.

The President’s message read:

His Majesty, Edward VII

London, Eng.

In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity which has been achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy, I extend on behalf of the American people most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and all the people of the British Empire.

Theodore Roosevelt

Wellfleet, Mass., Jan.19, 1903.

The reply from the King came back:

Sandringham, Jan. 19, 1903

The President,

White House, Washington, America

I thank you most sincerely for the kind message which I have just received from you, through Marconi’s trans-Atlantic wireless telegraphy. I sincerely reciprocate in the name of the people of the British Empire the cordial greetings and friendly sentiment expressed by you on behalf of the American Nation and I heartily wish you and your country every possible prosperity.

Edward R. and I.

My husband enjoyed telling me about that time when he was young, when the new radio service on ships also began. Cunard was the first shipping company which had confidence in him and agreed to his proposal to install it on their transatlantic liners. This was a success for Guglielmo as a businessman and profitable for the Marconi Company.

In 1905, six miles from Table Head and a little further inland, he set up another radio station which was given the name of “Marconi Towers”. The spectacular sight of this larger and more powerful radio station could be admired from at least fifty miles away. In the same year Guglielmo also began work on a new radio station at Clifden in Ireland to communicate with Cape Breton. The site he chose was on a plain near the beautiful Atlantic coast of Connemara in south-west Ireland. It was well-equipped and more powerful than the one at Poldhu, although less so than the station at Coltano, the most important one, which was in Italy near Livorno. The Clifden station was inaugurated on 15th October1907 when a successful radio transmission with Glace Bay was carried out. Guglielmo was particularly pleased by the success of the Clifden station since Ireland was his mother’s native land.

In February, 1908, Guglielmo started a permanent commercial radio service. From that moment he began an activity that he knew he could extend all over the world. He told me that the following year a fire broke out at the Glace Bay radio station caused by the excessively high tension. Fortunately, there were no victims. Guglielmo stayed there for many months, supervising the reconstruction personally, making it safer and installing more efficient and powerful machinery. In 1913, twelve radio-telegraph operators were sent to the new radio station at Louisbourg, built by Guglielmo once again on the island of Cape Breton. In 1919 in a radio broadcast from Ireland, the human voice was heard for the first time at Louisbourg.

At the beginning of the First World War, Guglielmo was in Canada; he returned to Italy to put himself at the disposal of the army as a volunteer, offering his help to improve the radio transmissions. He was given the rank of captain. Guglielmo often spoke to me of the time in 1919, immediately after the end of the war, when he was sent by the Italian government to the Versailles Peace Conference as a member of the Italian delegation. The Conference had the task of drawing up the official peace treaty between the principal victorious nations (Great Britain, France, Italy, USA and Japan) and the defeated ones (above all, Germany, which was to suffer extremely harsh terms) in the great war which had just ended.

The Italian delegation was led by the Prime Minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and by the Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino (who at a certain moment abandoned the Conference in protest against the terms which were far from favourable for Italy). On 28^th June, 1919 the Italian delegation, together with the others, signed the final peace treaty and my husband’s signature can still be recognized today together with the others on the final document which is kept in the archives of the French State. He was very proud of this fact; although, privately, he used to say with disapproval that it had been a “mutilated” victory for Italy.