Signor Marconis Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century and the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution - Hardcover

Gavin Weightman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1422350436 ISBN 13: 9781422350430

Publisher: Da Capo Press/Perseus, 2003

Synopsis

In an era when the telephone, the telegraph, and electricity had everyone wondering just what science would think of next, the startling answer came in 1896 in the form of two mysterious wooden boxes containing a device Marconi had rigged up in the attic of his family home near Bologna. It was a device to transmit messages "through the ether." Many of those at the first public demonstration of the invention thought that they were witnessing a con man's trick. None could 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. For this was nothing less than the birth of the radio, even if no scientist in Europe or America, or even Marconi himself, could at first say how it worked. And certainly no one knew how far these radio waves could travel, until 1903, when a Morse code message from President Theodore Roosevelt to the king of England flashed from Cape Cod to Cornwall - clear across the Atlantic. Signor Marconi's Magic Box is a portrait of the man and his time - and a tale of science and scientists, business and businessmen. There are British blowhards, American hucksters, unscrupulous charlatans, and outlandish theorists, all attracted to the mysterious new medium. And of course there is Marconi a character par excellence, a complicated and celebrated genius - a man destined for fame and fortune, and fated to become a virtual prisoner of both.

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, is published in February 2002.

From Publishers Weekly

Dapper, aristocratic Guglielmo Marconi doesn't fit the typical inventor stereotype: he lacked wild hair, wasn't absentminded, wore debonair-looking hats and frequently wooed women when traveling by ship. Yet Marconi's aptitude for technology led him to become the father of wireless telegraphy and radio. Born in 1874 to an Italian father and an Irish mother, Marconi was always fascinated by the nascent technology of electricity and, as a young man, was struck by the idea that he could transmit telegraph messages-then carried by cables-through the air. At a crowded London meeting hall in 1896, he made a dramatic public demonstration of his idea by sending a current from one innocuous-looking box to a receiver he carried around the hall with him, causing it to ring: "No messages were being sent at all-just an invisible electronic signal. But in 1896 that was sensational enough," writes documentary filmmaker and journalist Weightman. Like many other great inventions, wireless was being pursued at the same time by a number of different inventors, including some shameless charlatans-some of whom, like the delightfully crooked Abraham White, give Weightman's dry book some desperately needed spark-and a great deal of Weightman's text is about the juggling for position among the inventors and their respective companies around the turn of the century. Although Weightman has his hands on an extremely exciting subject, there is precious little life to his writing, and even exciting episodes, like the sending of an early type of wireless distress signal from the sinking Titanic, fail to engage. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press/Perseus
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1422350436
• ISBN 13: 9781422350430
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312