SIGNOR MARCONIS MAGIC BOX; The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19Th Century and the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution

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.

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.