Marconi in East Kent

MARCONI IN EAST KENT

Initially intended as an exploration of Marconi’s connection to Fort Burgoyne,
Dover, this project quickly grew thanks to the support and interest of many.
Marconi is ‘claimed’ by many in the UK and it seemed to me that our particular
corner of East Kent has as much claim as any; more to the point, those
connections should be celebrated, not least given my own ongoing
associations with radio.
The following are, in essence, my notes for a talk I was invited to give during
the early days of October 2023 and may not read too coherently as a text,
however, that talk not only confirmed my suspicions of the general
enthusiasm, locally at least, for the topic but also, as is so often the case, also
added to my own knowledge and understanding of the subject.
Much more information has come my way since delivering that talk along with
several invitations to explore and expland on these notes further, but, as the
saying goes, we have to start somewhere.
Thanks especially to Chris Valdus, Jonathan Groves, Emily Groves, Alan Rouse
and Stefan Setchell who designed the ‘front cover’.
There’s more, much more, to follow in 2024.
Barry

On October 29, 1831, English physicist Michael Faraday discovered the curious
phenomenon that electricity could be transmitted despite the absence of
electric wires.
This was almost 50 years before Edison patented the electric light bulb in
1879.
In 1864 Scottish mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell proposed a
comprehensive theory of electromagnetism, which predicted that coupled
electric and magnetic fields could travel through space as an electromagnetic
wave
In 1879 German phycisist Heinrich Hertz successfully proved Maxwell's theory
with a series of experiments which produced and received what are now
called radio in the Very High Frequency range.
William Preece consulting engineer for the General Post Office, later Engineerin-Chief
of the GPO in 1892 carried out a series of experiments in the Lake
District during which he succeeded in transmitting and receiving Morse radio
signals over a distance of about 1mile (1.6km) across Coniston Water the fifth
largest lake in the District by area.
Born in Caernarfon, Wales, in February 1834, William Preece was educated at
Kings College School, a public school in Wimbledon, South West London and
later at Kings College London, one of the two founding colleges of the
University of London, before going on to study at the Royal Institution in
London under Michael Faraday himself.
It was in 1896 however that Preece was introduced to a young Italian, newly
arrived in London together with his Mother, Anna ‘Annie ‘Jameson, Guglielmo
Marconi.
The Granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of the renowned Irish Whiskey
Distillers bearing his name, Annie Fenwick Jameson was born “about 1840” in
County Wexford, Ireland, the daughter of Andrew Jameson and Margaret
[Miller].
Whilst attending classes at the Conservatoire in Bologna where she was
staying with family friends and business associates of the Jameson’s Anna
formed a relationship with Giuseppe Marconi an Italian aristocrat banker and
landowner some 15 years her elder.

Unimpressed by their daughter’s choice of suitor, Anna’s parents, on her return
to Ireland, engineered her introduction to Irish Society however Anna
continued to correspond with Giuseppe and on reaching the age of consent
they eloped and married on April 16th 1864 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pas-de-
Calais, France; returning to live in Bologna they had two sons, Alfonso [b 1865]
and Guglielmo [b 25/4/1874]
Annie, Alfonso and Guglielmo visited England for a three year stay whilst the
boys were aged only 12 and 3 such that, on their return to Italy, each was
fluent in their Mother’s native tongue, much to their Father’s disapproval.
Returning to Italy the Marconi boys education was overseen by a local
schoolmaster at the family’s country estate, Villa Grifone, although it was
Annie who gave them lessons in English and, Anglican, Bible Studies.
Guglielmo eventually experienced formal education in Florence, something
that did not go well for many reasons, not least his perceived attitude, his
inability to mix socially with the other pupils and his strange ‘foreign’ accent.
Finally he won his Father’s support when he declared an ambition to join the
Academy of the Regia Marina, the Royal Italian Navy.
Unfortunately this tentative Father/Son relationship soon faltered when
Guglielmo failed the entrance exam for the Naval Academy.
The young Marconi’s appetite for education did however rekindle when he
enrolled at the Livorno Technical Institute to study Physics and Chemistry
under Professor Bizzarrini supplemented by home tutoring in the principles of
electricity by Professor Rosa, all paid for, of course, by Marconi Senior.
Although he failed the University of Bologna entrance exam, Anna was able to
further her youngest son’s education with the support of a near neighbour, a
lecturer at the University, Professor Righi who also agreed to allow Marconi
access to the University library as well as certain of the laboratories within his
remit.
It was at the University that Marconi began to explore the use of Prof Hertz’s
electromagnetic waves as a possible means of providing communication over
distance by use of a telegraphy that would not rely on the need for wires
stretched across the countryside joining telegraphic stations.

By the winter of 1894, aged only 20, Guglielmo Marconi had established
himself within two attic rooms of the family home, Villa Grifone, with the
moral support of both his Mother, Anna, and Prof Righi who also loaned a
degree of equipment to the fledgling experiments.
Soon Marconi was able to demonstrate the initial results of his experiments by
sounding a buzzer triggered by a transmitting device some 10 metres away
and, crucially, not connected by means of any wires.
The experiments continued throughout 1895 with the receiver placed ever
more distant from the transmitter until September of that year by which time
signals were able to be sent over a distance of one mile [1.5km] and,
whatsmore, to a receiver beyond a small hill.
By the end of 1895 he was obtaining reliable detection and recording of
signals from his transmitter at distances of more than one and a half miles
[2.4km].
As Professor (later Sir) Ambrose Fleming, Chair of Electrical Technology at
University College London, the first of its kind in England, would later note the
novelty of Marconi’s idea “is rather to be measured by its non-obviousness to
experts than by the simplicity of the device and its proved utility".
By now, external investment was clearly now necessary, to which end
Giuseppe’s contacts were able to facilitate an introduction to the Italian
Ministry of Post and Telegraph, while Annie’s family in England began to show
great interest, particularly, among them, her Nephew Henry Jameson-Davis.
A family friend in Italy the Honorary Consul at the United States Consulate in
Bologna, wrote a letter of introduction to the Ambassador of Italy in London,
explaining who Marconi was and outlining his discoveries.
The Ambassador replied advising that the family obtain a patent on Marconi;s
discoveries while also encouraging them to travel to Britain, where, he
believed, it would be easier to find the necessary funds to put his experiments
into practical use.
Accompanied by Annie, his mother, Marconi traveled to London in February
1896 still aged only 21.

One fanciful tale has it that on their entry into England, at Dover, a Customs
officer opened Marconi’s case only to find various experimental apparatus of a
previously unknown type. Said customs officer apparently immediately
contacted The Admiralty in London which duly gained Marconi the interest and
support of The GPO, The General Post Office.
Although somewhat more prosaic the reality is more likely that Guglielmo’s
cousin, Henry Jameson-Davis, had a far greater influence in helping Marconi
realise his ambitions than any Dover Custom’s Officer.
An established engineer specialising in the planning and construction of
cereal mills Jameson Davis had an established office in London from which he
would assist Marconi in obtaining the patent for his invention having first
installed his Aunt and his cousin, in rented accommodation near Kensington
Gardens, West London.
Jameson Davis also organized Marconi's first private demonstrations in
England, managing to raise financial backing in the process so much so that
Jameson Davis, who also came to realise the potential of his cousin's invention,
would propose they would found a company together.
Initially reluctant and not a little cautious Marconi finally agreed to the
proposal and on 20 July 1897 the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company was
founded by which time British Patent number 12039 titled "Improvements in
Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor", the
first patent for a radio wave based communication system, had been applied
for and granted to Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi.
In the interim via a well-known electrical engineer, Mr A A Cambell Swinton,
Guglielmo was introduced to William Preece Chief Engineer at the GPO whose
interest in Marconi’s proposals was immediate, so much so that an early
demonstration transmission was arranged over a distance of approximately
half a mile.
Unlike his Italian Military counterparts Preece recognised the potential of
Wireless Telegraphy in communicating over water, with ships and lighthouses
in particular, and was confident enough in what he had witnessed to engage
with other Government Departments, not least as a potential source of future
funding for further experiments and demonstrations.

A further series of tests was soon scheduled to take place on Salisbury Plain,
observed by Captain Jackson on behalf of the Navy and Major Carr of the Army
as well as by Post Office representatives.
These tests proved so successful, reaching distances of up to 4 ½ miles, that
Preece’s next move was to relocate further west, to the Bristol Channel, where
successful transmissions reached over a distance of almost 9 miles [14 kms].
News of Marconi’s successes were soon widely reported, not least in his native
Italy where, both unfortunately and inconveniently National Service was a
requirement.
A solution to this predicament was reached whereby Marconi would be
enrolled into the Regia Marina, Italian Navy, but seconded to the Italian
Embassy in London as a Naval Attache; nevertheless this didn’t remove any
moral obligations to his country of birth such that when Marconi was recalled
to Rome to demonstrate his experiments he was in no position to decline.
The Italian Ministry of Post and Telegraph were roundly criticised for not
having recognised the potential inherent in Marconi’s experiments while
Preece was criticised for investing time and money in an Italian whilst
seemingly being ignorant of similar advances and experiments taking place in
Britain.
Marconi returned to London, together with his Mother, in August 1897 to take
his place as majority shareholder on the board of the Wireless Telegraph and
Signal Company with his cousin Henry Jameson-Davis his Managing Director.
Although this move offered commercial credibility it would soon sour
Guglielmo’s relationship with Preece who, on receipt, of Marconi’s written
advice that his patents had been assigned exclusively to the new company
wrote “I regret to say that I must stop all experiments and all action until I
learn the conditions that are to determine relations between your company
and the Government Departments who have encouraged and helped you so
much.”
The depth of Preece’s emotions was further demonstrated by his decision to
undertake experiments at Fort Burgoyne, from which Marconi was to be
excluded.

A letter dated 7th September 1897 from the GPO to the Admiralty, inviting
them to send a representative to those experiments, clearly demonstrates the
extent of Preece’s concern, adding, as it does, “I am to add that, as Signor
Marconi has now disposed of his rights in the invention to a private company it
is thought advisable that, for the present, the results of these further
experiments should not be made public.”
Although
intended to
have been
carried out with
no small degree
of secrecy,
newspapers
soon carried
accounts of the
trials

Morse code - ordinary dots and dashes which can be made into letters and words,
as everybody knows. With each movement of the key bluish sparks jump an inch
between the two brass knobs of the induction coil, the same kind of coil and the
same kind of sparks that are familiar in experiments with the Roentgen rays. For
one dot, a single spark jumps; for one dash, there comes a stream of sparks. One
knob of the induction coil is connected with the earth, the other with the wire
hanging from the mast head. Each spark indicates a certain oscillating impulse
from the electrical battery that actuates the coil; each one of these impulses
shoots through the aërial wire, and from the wire through space by oscillations of
the ether, travelling at the speed of light, or seven times around the earth in a
second. That is all there is in the sending of these Marconi messages.
McClure's Magazine, June, 1899, pages 99-112:
MARCONI'S WIRELESS TELEGRAPH.
MESSAGES SENT AT WILL THROUGH SPACE.--TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT
WIRES ACROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL.
BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT.
an American illustrated monthly periodical
Naturally reports of the Fort Burgoyne experiments alerted Marconi,
moreover, that he was being excluded leading him to advise Preece, in a
private letter, that he would be obliged to work abroad if the GPO was not to
continue to be as amicable toward his endeavours as he and Preece had
believed it would be.
As a gesture of goodwill Marconi was advised that he would be allowed to
retain the services of the Post Office and War Office staff who had been
assigned to assist him although an alternative point of view would, of course,
be that this would allow the Post Office access to results of Marconi's ongoing
experiments while keeping their own from him.
Unfortunately for both Preece and the Admiralty the results from the Fort
Burgoyne trials were not able to replicate those obtained earlier by Marconi,
and he was duly invited
to come to Dover on 6th October to assist with further trials.

Whilst future co-operations between Marconi and government officials
continued the relationship had been damaged although with Preece
approaching retirement age he was happy to encourage the comradely spirit in
which the early technical successes had been achieved.
However with Preece’s retirement in 1899 the relationship between the
Government and the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company was all but
irretrievable.
One lasting legacy of that working relationship however saw George Kemp,
who had served as an electrician and instructor with the Royal Navy before
working for William Preece at the Post Office where he was one of the first to
be assigned to Marconi, in July 1896, ultimately moving to the fledgling
Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company where he worked as «first assistant» to
Signor Marconi for the next thirty six years.
Relationships between the company and Whitehall further worsened in 1900
when plans were put in place to explore means by which Marconi’s patents
might be declared void; alternatively the Government would explore ways of
circumventing them with the use of similar, but legally different, equipment.
To this end the Post Office secretly commissioned Professors Lodge and
Thompson with each of them going on to produce over thirty pages of analysis
and recommendation, Lodge in particular concerning himself with the validity
of the existing patents, referring to his own experiments in the field and his
presentation to the Royal Institution of June 1st 1894 and to the British
Association in Oxford in August of that same year. Lodge however had to
accept that he did not pursue the matter at the time as he was unaware that
there would be any demand for this kind of telegraphy.
Lodge even accused Marconi of “a tendency ... to attempt a claim at
everything, whether he had invented it or not” suggesting that the Italian had
claimed “things which he probably obtained from my writings”.
Ironically an order on behalf of the Royal Navy had already been placed with
the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in July 1900 before Lodge's and
Thompson's reports had reached the Admiralty with a total of Thirty-two
wireless sets having been ordered.
No legal action was taken by the Government, although one of the directors of
Marconi's Company later discovered that the Admiralty had sent one of the
Marconi sets to be copied, The Admiralty subsequently accepted that they

had had fifty such copies made but refused to pay any royalty to the Marconi
Company.
In 1900 The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company changed its name to
Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company; the company's capital accounted for
100,000 stock options, each worth £1; Marconi was appointed Technical
Director and his cousin, Jameson Davis, Financial Director.
Marconi’s connection to Dover did not end with the conclusion of the Fort
Burgoyne tests however, and while the series of tests at Salisbury ultimately
achieved a range of over thirty miles to Bath, with the support of Post Office,
War Office and Admiralty representatives there were to be similar
collaborations with experiments at the South Foreland lighthouse, near Dover.
The Corporation of Trinity House – who are responsible for all lighthouses and
lightships - were looking for a reliable system of communicating with their
lightships and off-shore lighthouses and were greatly intrigued by Marconi’s
innovative wireless telegraphy.
In December 1898, Marconi’s assistant, George Kemp, went out to the East
Goodwin Lightship located 12 miles offshore and guarding the notorious
Goodwin Sands a 10-mile-long Sandbank located at the southern end of the
North Sea that lies between 0.5m (1ft 8in) above the low water mark to around
3m (10ft) below low water, except for one channel, known as Kellet Gut and
which reaches to a depth of 20m (66ft), the Goodwins are the resting place of
more than 2,000 wrecked ships.
Marconi meanwhile remained on land, close to the lighthouse successfully
recording On Christmas Eve 1898, the first ever ship-to-shore radio
transmission.

Following the successes at South Foreland, the French government allowed
Marconi to install transmission equipment at Wimereux on the coast of
Northern France, 7kms North of Boulogne, 30kms South of Calais, and on 27
March 1899 he transmitted the first international wireless message, ‘Greetings
from France to England,’ from Wimereux, to the South Foreland Lighthouse.
The first international cable, was laid across the English Channel in 1850 by the
English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company, its more reliable replacement
being laid in September 1851 from St. Margaret’s Bay, to Sangatte, France.
However, according to estimates at the time of Marconi’s experiments:
Every mile of deep-sea cable costs about £220; every mile for the land-ends
about £250. All that we save, also the great expense of keeping a cable
steamer constantly in commission making repairs and laying new lengths. All
we need is a couple of masts and a little wire. The wear and tear is practically
nothing. The cost of running, simply for home batteries and operators' keep."
Asked how fast they could transmit messages?" the reply was
About fifteen words a minute; but we shall do better than that no doubt with
experience. You have seen how clear our tape reads. Any one who knows the
Morse code will see that the letters are perfect."
The first RADIO DISTRESS SIGNAL was transmitted from the East Goodwin
Lightship 10 days prior to that International Milestone, on 17 March 1899,
when the merchant vessel Elbe ran aground on the Goodwin Sands.
This message was received by the radio operator on duty at the South
Foreland Lighthouse, who was able to summon the aid of the Ramsgate
lifeboat.
The Goodwin Sands again featured in another ‘first’ when on 30 April 1899, the
East Goodwin Sands Lightship sent a distress message on her own account after
she was rammed by the SS R. F. Matthews.
This was prior to the introduction of the ‘SOS’ signal and the recognized call
sign for ships in distress at the time was ‘CQD’.
The wireless operators working on ships mostly came from the ranks of railroad
and postal telegraphers. In England a general call on the landline wire was a
“CQ.” which preceded time signals and special notices. By using “CQ,” each

station receives a message from a single transmission and an economy of time
and labor was realized. Naturally, “CQ,” went with the operators to sea and was
likewise used for a general call. This sign for “all stations” was adopted soon
after wireless came into being by both ships and shore stations
In 1904, the Marconi company suggested the use of “CQD” for a distress signal.
Although generally accepted to mean, “Come Quick Danger,” that is not the case.
It is a general call, “CQ,” followed by “D,” meaning distress. A strict interpretation
would be “All stations, Distress.”
The ‘SOS’ signal was only established as an International Distress Signal by an
agreement made between the British Marconi Society and the German
Telefunken organisation at the Berlin Radio Conference, 3 October 1906 and
formally introduced on 1 July 1908.
There’s a common misnomer that the distress call is short for “Save Our Ship”
or “Save Our Souls,” but the letters didn’t stand for anything—it was an
adaptation of an existing German radio call. The signal consists of three dots,
three dashes, and another three dots—simple to tap out in Morse code during
an emergency and easy to understand even in poor conditions.
The first time the ‘SOS’ signal was used in an emergency was on 10 June 1909,
when the Cunard liner SS Slavonia was wrecked off the Azores. Two steamers
received her signals and went to the rescue.
The RMS Titanic had been equipped with a radio room and a Marconi-leased
telegraph machine when she made her maiden voyage in April 1912 with two
young Marconi-employed operators, chief telegraphist Jack Phillips and his
assistant Harold Bride, sending Morse code “Marconigrams" on behalf of
Titanic’s well-heeled customers 24 hours a day.
Both Marconi’s technology monopoly and the torrent of personal messages
conveyed through Titanic’s telegraph proved fatal on the night of Titanic’s
floundering.
When one of the first ships to receive Titanic’s distress call, SS Frankfurt,
responded late to Titanic’s CQD call, Bride responded angrily possibly in part
to due business concerns as Frankfurt’s telegraph operator worked for German
telecommunications company Telefunken and Marconi’s operators were
discouraged if not forbidden to trade telegraph messages with their
competitors.

As Titanic sank, telegraph operators Bride and Phillips began to switch
between SOS and CQD, but could only send or receive one message at a time,
and their line was repeatedly tied up with the confusion of other operators.
Phillips went down with Titanic, sending distress signals into his last moments.
An enquiry undertaken by The US Senate concluded that wireless
communications at sea should be operational 24 hours a day, and called for
regulation of the American radio industry that ultimately restricted amateur
use of long-wave frequencies and included a provision through which the U.S.
adopted SOS as its standard distress call.
One little known fact but one shared by former Marconi employee Tim Wander
is that a total of 20 people who had tickets for The Titaic missed the ship’s
sailing from Southampton among them Guglielmo Marconi, his wife Beatrice
[nee O’Brien] and his three children who had been invited on board by Bruce
Ismay, Chairman of the White Star Line.
Seemingly a legal problem needed addressing and the family had sailed for
New York three days earlier on the Lusitania with Beatrice only cancelling her
ticket for the Titanic by telegram four hours before that ship sailed while
Marconi still had in his pocket a return ticket for a ship that never docked.
In September 1899, at the annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science (BAAS) held within the Connaught Hall in Dover, the
Marconi Company exhibited their radio equipment, which system was used to
transmit messages across the English Channel to the Mayor of Boulogne who
duly returned his Greetings.

The British Association tended to favor a narrative of scientific research as a
collectivist, international, gentlemanly-amateur pursuit, largely confined to
the laboratory.
Marconi, by contrast, explained the development of wireless telegraphy as the
achievement of his own genius.
Appealing not only to the established scientific elite but to a range of nontraditional
audiences, and stressing the possibilities or ‘imagined uses’ of his
technology even more so than his actual results, he succeeded in commanding
unprecedented influence.
One last connection with East Kent sees Marconi elected as a member of The
Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club in Dover on 30 th January 1925, his yacht, Elettra,
a schooner of 633 Gross Tonnes, recorded as being in Dover harbour May 12 th
1925 “preparatory to going across to Calais (on May 15 th ) to carry out some
important experiments”.
Marconi remained a member of the Yacht Club for the rest of his life.
In 1909, Marconi shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun a
founder of Telefunken for their "contributions to the development of wireless
telegraphy" (radio communications).
Marconi died in Rome July 20 th 1937, aged 63.
COLONEL H JAMESON-DAVIS died at the age of 82 on 25 th December,1936, at
his home, "Estrella,"in Woking, Surrey, after two months' illness.
To return to the 1899 McClures Magazine article
A Marconi company spokesman:
don't you see the vast usefulness in warfare of control over certain craft? Think a
moment."
He smiled mysteriously while I thought.
"You mean torpedo craft?"
"Exactly. The warfare of the future, will have startling things in it; perhaps the
steering of torpedo craft from a distance will be counted in the number. But we
may leave the details to those who will work them out."
And here, I think, we may leave this whole fascinating subject, in the hope that

we have seen clearly what already is, and with a half discernment what is yet to
be.
ONE LAST, FOR NOW, ADDENDUM: Born in Howland, Maine, Percy Spencer
had little formal schooling but found his way into an engineering career,
thanks in large part to a natural curiosity. At the age of 12, he got a job at the
local spool mill, manufacturing wooden spools for winding thread and wire.
At 14, Spencer got hired to install electricity at the nearby paper mill.
A few years later, he was so inspired by the actions of the Titanic’s Marconi
trained and employed radio operators that he joined the Navy and learned the
new technology. Spencer would later explain,“just got hold of a lot of
textbooks and taught myself while I was standing watch at night.”
After WW1 I, Spencer landed a job at the newly-established American
Appliance Company.
In 1925, the company changed its name to Raytheon Manufacturing Company
and Spencer became one of Raytheon’s most valued and well-known
engineers. During WW2, while Raytheon was working on improving radar
technology for Allied forces, Spencer was the company’s go-to problem solver;
in an email to Popular Mechanics, current Raytheon engineer and part-time
company historian Chet Michalak says Spencer “had a knack for finding simple
solutions to manufacturing problems.”
Spencer earned several patents while working on more efficient and effective
ways to mass-produce radar magnetrons and in 1946, while testing one of his
magnetrons he stuck his hand in his pocket, to find the peanut cluster bar had
melted. The following day, Percy Spencer brought in corn kernels, popped
them with his new invention, and shared some popcorn with the entire office.
The microwave oven was born, brought into being by someone with no specific
training in his field, somewhat like Marconi before him, and who was inspired
by the work of another, Guglielmo Marconi
Text (c) 2023 Dover Tales