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Marconi and the Maxwellians: The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy
RevisitedAuthor(s): Sungook HongSource: Technology and Culture,
Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 717-749Published by: The Johns
Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of
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Marconi and the Maxwellians: The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy
Revisited SUNGOOK HONG
The point is which of the two was the first to send a wireless
telegram? Was it Lodge in 1894 or Marconi in 1896? [SILVANUS P.
THOMPSON, London Times, July 15, 1902]
We live in a world where technological priority disputes and
patent litigation are so commonplace that only a spectacular case,
such as Kodak versus Polaroid over the instant camera, attracts our
attention. In the past two hundred years, such disputes have become
increasingly frequent. Notable examples include those over the
invention of spin- ning machines (John Hargreaves vs. Richard
Arkwright), steelmaking (Henry Bessemer vs. William Kelly), the
incandescent lamp (Thomas Edison vs. Joseph Swan), the telephone
(Alexander Graham Bell vs. Elisha Gray), the airplane (the Wright
brothers vs. Samuel Langley), and amplifiers and the heterodyne
principle in radio (Lee De Forest vs. Edwin Howard Armstrong).
Historians of technology, however, have generally paid little
attention to the conflicting priority claims themselves, except
when priority and patent disputes can be used as a window through
which the character- istics of the evolution of technology are
analyzed.' There are two well-grounded reasons for this neglect.
First, unlike scientific discover-
DR. HONG received his Ph.D. from Seoul National University with
the dissertation "Forging the Scientist-Engineer: A Professional
Career of John Ambrose Fleming" and is working on the
science-technology relationship in power and early radio
engineering. He thanksJed Buchwald, Bert Hall, Bruce Hunt,Janis
Langins, and the Technology and Culture referees for their valuable
comments. He is indebted to Professor Thad Trenn of the University
of Toronto and Roy Rodwell of the Marconi Company Archives for
their help with the archives quoted here, and he thanks Youngran
Jo, Shinkyu Yang, Jane Jenkins, Andre Leblanc, and Ben Olshin for
their assistance, as well as the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers Fellowship in Electrical History for
facilitating the research.
'See, e.g., the important research of David E. Hounshell,
"Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantage of Being an
Expert," Technology and Culture 16 (1975): 133-61; Robert C. Post,
"Stray Sparks from the Induction Coil: The Volta Prize and the Page
Patent," Proceedings of the Institute ofElectrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) 64 (1976): 1279-86; James E. Brittain, "The
Introduction of the Loading Coil: George A. Campbell
? 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights
reserved. 0040-165X/94/3504-0004$01.00
717
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718 Sungook Hong
ies, priority disputes in technology often develop into patent
litigation, which ultimately involves judicial decisions or
interferences by the Patent Office. These court decisions act like
a forced judgment on the question of priority. "Closure" of the
controversy (to use the social constructivist's term) is not
brought about by negotiation among the engineers involved, but
rather by external, compulsory forces. These court judgments, which
historians cannot overrule and which funda- mentally determine
future histories, sometimes differ from those based on detailed
historical analysis. Historians therefore treat historical
assessments of inventions as a sphere separate from legal decisions
about patents and avoid entering into the latter realm.' Second,
and more important, historians of technology have usually
considered invention as a long-term, social process, which includes
not only the creative activity of an inventor but also historically
accumulated tradi- tions in which the work of many people is
merged." The priority dispute is itself interpreted as evidence for
regarding the invention as something socially conditioned. The
question, for example, of who first invented wireless telegraphy is
hardly meaningful from such a perspective, because "wireless
telegraphy" itself did not burst into being as a result of a single
genius's efforts, but was gradually shaped as several different
technological traditions converged.
Recent historical studies on the origin of radio reflect such a
shift of emphases in the interpretation of technological
inventions. In a highly influential monograph, Syntony and Spark:
The Origins of Radio, Hugh G. J. Aitken argues that wireless
telegraphy cannot be said to have been
and Michael I. Pupin," Technology and Culture 11 (1970): 36-57.
Hounshell contrasts the amateurish style of invention (Alexander
Graham Bell) with the professional style (Elisha Gray), arguing for
the former's advantage, whereas Brittain compares the organized
scientific research of Campbell with an independent inventor,
Pupin. Post examines how the "notorious Page patent" on the
induction coil was constructed in the name of "scientific
chauvinism" and exploited by the corporate interest.
'Compare Brittain (n. 1 above) with Joseph Gray Jackson, "Patent
Interference
Proceedings and Priority of Invention," Technology and Culture
11 (1970): 598-600. See also Thomas Hughes's analysis of Lucien
Gaulard andJohn D. Gibbs's (who were defeated
by S. Z. de Ferranti in litigation) pioneering works on
alternating current transformers; in Thomas P. Hughes, Networks
ofPower: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore,
1983), pp. 86-96.
3Lynn White, jr., "The Act of Invention: Causes, Contexts,
Continuities, and Conse-
quences," Technology and Culture 3 (1962): 486-500; Maurice
Daumas, introduction to A
History of Technology and Invention (New York, 1979), 3:1-15;
Hugh G.J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American
Radio, 1900-1932 (Princeton, N.J., 1985), pp. 14 ff.; George
Basalla, The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge, 1988); John Law,
"Theory and Narrative in the History of Technology: Response,"
Technology and Culture 32 (1991): 377-84.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 719
invented by Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937). He argues instead
that William Crookes had conceived of Hertzian wave telegraphy in
1892 and that Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) demonstrated this before the
British Association at its annual meeting in Oxford in 1894, one or
two years before Marconi. In a critical passage, Aitken remarks,
"Did Lodge in 1894 suggest in public that his equipment could be
used for signalling? Did his lecture refer to the application of
Hertzian waves to telegraphy? Did he demonstrate transmission and
reception of Morse Code? The answer would seem to be affirmative in
each case. In this sense Lodge must be recognized as the inventor
of radio telegraphy."' This interpre- tation is quite novel and
revisionist, since, before Aitken, Marconi had usually been
regarded as the first to invent wireless telegraphy.5
In this article, I shall take up the priority dispute between
Marconi and Lodge over the invention of wireless telegraphy. My
analysis will show that any claim for Lodge's priority is
incorrect. But my main purpose is not to argue instead for
Marconi's priority. It is rather to deconstruct the Lodge versus
Marconi debate to reveal how two totally different discourses (as
noted in this article's epigraph from Silvanus Thompson) first came
into being and how these were then reinforced by the different
interests involved. After beginning with Aitken's evi- dence, I
then turn to what was later claimed as Lodge's demonstration
4Hugh G.J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark: The Origins of Radio (New
York, 1976; 2d ed. Princeton, N.J., 1985), p. 123. One reviewer of
the second edition of Syntony and Spark noticed this point; see A.
N. Stranges in American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1166-67.
5For claims supportive of Marconi's priority, see Charles
Sfisskind, "Popov and the Beginning of Radiotelegraphy,"
Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 50 (1962): 2036-47,
"The Early History of Electronics. III. Prehistory of
Radiotelegraphy," IEE Spectrum 6 (April 1969): 69-74, and "The
Early History of Electronics. IV. First Radioteleg- raphy
Experiments," IEEE Spectrum 6 (August 1969): 66-70. Aitken's claim
for Lodge's priority was not unprecedented. W. P. Jolly, who has
written biographies of both Lodge and Marconi, admitted Lodge's
wireless telegraphy at the British Association meeting in 1894.
Compare W. P. Jolly, Marconi (London, 1972), pp. 41-42, with his
Sir Oliver Lodge (London, 1974), p. 97. AfterAitken, however,
Lodge's priority was widely accepted. A recent biography of Lodge
emphasizes Lodge's "radio transmission" in 1894, based on Aitken's
account and Lodge's own; see Peter Rowlands, Oliver Lodge and the
Liverpool Physical Society (Liverpool, 1990), pp. 115-23. Rowland
F. Pocock, The Early British Radio Industry (Manchester, 1988),
though admitting Marconi's originality, mentions Lodge's radio
transmission in the Oxford lecture in 1894, on p. 82. G. A. Isted,
a former assistant to Marconi, has lately written that Lodge's
demonstration at the British Association in Oxford "is the earliest
recorded instance of the transmission and reception of a signal by
Hertzian waves and it is clearly of great historical importance."
See G. A. Isted, "Guglielmo Marconi and the History of Radio: Part
I," GeneralElectric Company Review 7, no. 1 (1991): 45-56 (esp. on
46). Aitken's argument is also picked up by Basalla (n. 3 above),
p. 99. I should mention here that my criticism of Aitken is
restricted to the origin of wireless telegraphy with reference to
Lodge and Marconi. My work is much indebted to Aitken's valuable
analysis on the interaction of scientific, technological, and
economic factors in the early stage of wireless telegraphy.
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720 Sungook Hong of wireless telegraphy in 1894. It will be
shown that this had nothing to do with telegraphy, nor with
alphabetic signals, nor with dots and dashes. I then turn to the
impact of Marconi and his British patent on the British Maxwellian
physicists--in particular Lodge, Thompson (1851-1916), George F.
FitzGerald (1851-1901), and John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945).6 The
transformation from Hertzian laboratory apparatus into commercial
wireless telegraphy was in fact accomplished by Marconi, an Italian
"practician." A certain disharmony between theory and practice
became apparent. Moreover, Marconi's patent appeared so strong that
it threatened to monopolize Hertzian waves and the British national
interest. Under these circumstances, the image of Lodge as the
inventor of wireless telegraphy was deliberately con- structed by
his friends and by Lodge himself.
This study clarifies not only the origin of wireless telegraphy
with special reference to Marconi and Lodge but also the
interaction between theory and practice in early radio history. It
shows that two different discourses on the theory and practice in
early wireless telegraphy--discourses which either emphasized the
influence of sci- ence on technology or denied any relationship
between them--were constructed by different groups of
participants.' My study also illustrates the way in which the
historical "facts" are at times constructed, as well as the way in
which these facts are analyzed by carefully cross-checking the
sources. My ultimate hope is that this article will contribute to
rehabilitating the priority dispute as an object of historical
research.8
FIemings Marconi Memorial Lecture in 1937
Aitken has critically examined various sources concerning the
Lodge versus Marconi priority issue. Besides Lodge's own
recollections, Aitken bases his conclusions on two other sources.
The first is a short article in
'For the lives and works of the British Maxwellian physicists,
see Jed Z. Buchwald, Fmm Maxwell to Microphysics (Chicago, 1985);
and Bruce J. Hunt, The Maxwellians (Ithaca, N. Y., 1991).
7For the relation between science and technology in early
wireless telegraphy, see the
analysis of Hugh G.J. Aitken, "Science, Technology and
Economics: The Invention of Radio as a Case Study," in The Dynamics
of Science and Technology, ed. W. Krohn, Edwin T.
Layton, Jr., and Peter Weingart (Dordrecht, 1978), pp. 89-111. I
have examined the
theory and practice issue in my forthcoming paper "From Hertz to
Marconi's Telegraphy: The Laboratory and the Field in Early
Wireless Experiments, 1888-1896."
8Patent records and patent interferences as sources for
historical research have been
pointed out by N. Reingold, "U.S. Patent Office Records as
Sources for the History of Invention and Technological Property,"
Technology and Culture 1 (1959/60): 156-67; and
Seymour L. Chapin, "Patent Interferences and the History of
Technology: A High-flying Example," Technology and Culture 12
(1971): 414-46. See also Hounshell (n. 1 above); Post (n. 1 above);
and Brittain (n. 1 above).
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 721
the Electrician of 1897, which stated that "both at Oxford [in
August 1894] and at the Royal Institution [in June 1894], Dr. Lodge
described and exhibited publicly in operation a combination of
sending and receiving apparatus constituting a system of telegraphy
substantially the same as that now claimed in the patent we have
referred to [Marconi's patent no. 12,039 of 1896]."' Aitken's
second source is Fleming's Marconi memorial lecture in 1937.
Fleming said that Marconi was "not the first person to transmit
alphabetic signals by electromagnetic waves." He instead admitted
Lodge's priority:
[Lodge] was able to transmit a dot or a dash signal and by
suitable combinations to send any letter of the alphabet on the
Morse code and consequently intelligible messages. He had also on
his table a Morse inker (so he tells me), and could have used it
with a sensitive relay to print down the signals, but as he wished
the audience to see the actual signals he preferred to use the
mirror galvanometer. It is, therefore, unquestionable that on the
occasion of his Oxford lecture in September [sic], 1894, Lodge
exhibited electric wave telegraphy over a short distance."'
Since the testimony was given by Fleming it seems truly
conclusive. Before Marconi's arrival in England in 1896, Fleming
and Lodge had been close friends, having studied together in their
youth at Edward Frankland's laboratory in South Kensington. Their
relationship deterio- rated rapidly, however, after Fleming became
scientific advisor of the Marconi Company (at that time Wireless
Telegraph and Signal Com- pany) in 1899. In all the years
afterward, right up until 1937, Fleming had never admitted Lodge's
priority, reiterating that "here [at the Oxford meeting] again no
mention of the application of these waves to telegraphy was made.""
Only after Marconi's death, it seems, did Fleming decide to tell
the truth. Aitken comments that "Fleming's memory also was capable
of improvement with the passage of time, or perhaps as commercial
and scientific rivalries receded into the past.""
9"Dr. Oliver Lodge's Apparatus for Wireless Telegraphy,"
Electrician 39 (1897): 686-87. Also quoted in Aitken, Syntony and
Spark (n. 4 above), p. 122.
'John Ambrose Fleming, "Guglielmo Marconi and the Development of
Radio- Communication," Journal of the Society of Arts 86 (1937):
42-63 (quoted on 46); cited in Aitken, Syntony and Spark, p. 123.
Aitken also recognized (on p. 174, n. 70) that the phrase of "it
is, therefore, unquestionable" is changed to read "it is,
therefore, questionable" in Degna Marconi, My Father Marconi, 2d
ed. (Ottawa, 1982), p. 21. Fleming slipped the date. The British
Association annual meeting was held at Oxford in August 1894, and
Lodge's experiments were done on August 14.
"John Ambrose Fleming, The Principles ofElectric Wave Telegraphy
(London, 1906), p. 424; Aitken, Syntony and Spark, p. 120.
2"Fleming, "Guglielmo Marconi" (n. 10 above), p. 42; Aitken,
Syntony and Spark, p. 122.
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722 Sungook Hong But one thing should be made clear. Fleming was
not present at the
Oxford British Association meeting in August 1894, the most
crucial event in the discussion. Fleming's source was not his own
memory, but Lodge's remark. That is clearly revealed by three
letters between Fleming and Lodge in 1937. Before his lecture in
November 1937, Fleming wrote to Lodge:
I have been asked by the Council of the Royal Society of Arts to
give next November 10th a Memorial Lecture on the "Work of Mar-
coni." ... One of the facts I am anxious to learn about is whether
in your lecture to the British Association at Oxford Meeting in
1894 you used a telegraphic relay in series with your coherer to
print on Morse Inker tape dot and dash signals? In his little book
on "Wireless" Dr. Eccles gives on page 54 a diagram of the
apparatus he says you employed at Oxford in 1894 [see fig. 1].... I
was present in June 1894 at your famous lecture at the Royal
Institution on "The Work of Hertz" and remember well your
experiments with your coherer. But to the best of my recollection
there was no direct reference to "telegraphy" in that lecture. I
was not present at the B.A. meeting at Oxford, but ... it is very
important to know from you whether at Oxford in 1894 you exhibited
a Hertz oscillator connected with coherer and used a telegraphic
relay in connection with it and morse inker and showed the
transmission and printing of dots and dash signals over any short
distance.13
Lodge replied that at Oxford he had actually used telegraphic
instruments and transmitted alphabetic signals, that is, dots and
dashes:
You are perfectly right that in 1894 at the Royal Institution I
did not refer to telegraphy. But, stimulated by Muirhead, who had
close connection with telegraphy and cables, I did at Oxford
demonstrate actual telegraphy. I had a Morse instrument there, but
it was not convenient for the large audience in the Museum theatre,
and therefore I used as receiver a Thomson marine signalling device
supplied by Muirhead's firm for that purpose, though I had a Morse
instrument on the table which I could have used instead. But the
deflections of the spot of light were plainly visible to the
audience, and gave quick and prolonged response corresponding to
the dots and dashes according to the manipulation of the key at the
distant end.'4
"John Ambrose Fleming to Oliver Lodge, August 24, 1937, Lodge
Collection, University College London (hereafter UCL) (emphasis in
original). W.H. Eccles's book is titled Wireless (London,
1933).
"4Lodge to Fleming, August 26, 1937 (copy), Lodge Collection,
UCL.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 723
BATTERY BATTERY
COHERER RELAY
TREMBLER
Oi FIG. 1.-W. H. Eccles's diagram of Oliver Lodge's receiver in
1894. (W H. Eccles, Wireless
[London, 1933], p. 54.)
Fleming's reply to Lodge, which foretold the content of his
lecture, shows that he entirely accepted Lodge's claims: "What you
tell me about your Oxford lecture in 1894 is very valuable and
important. It is quite clear that in 1894 you could send and
receive alphabetic signals in Morse Code by Electric Waves and did
send them 180 feet or so. Marconi's idea that he was the first to
do that is invalid..... Marconi was always determined to claim
everything for himself. His conduct to me about the first
transatlantic transmission was very ungenerous.... However, these
things get known in time and justice is done."'5
As we can see in this last letter, Fleming had been hurt by
Marconi's attitude toward his employees. His resignation as
scientific advisor to the Marconi Company in 1931 and Marconi's
death in 1937 might have influenced Fleming to be more sympathetic
to Lodge. He might have felt as if "things get known in time and
justice is done." But this could not have improved his memory of
something he had never experienced. It was only Lodge who informed
Fleming about the Oxford meeting. Therefore, Fleming's lecture in
1937 cannot be regarded as conclusive.
For later analysis, I divide Lodge's claim into two parts.
First, Lodge actually sent telegraphic signals, that is, dots and
dashes, during the Oxford meeting of the British Association in
August 1894. Second, Lodge had a Morse instrument there, but, owing
to the size of the
'5Fleming to Lodge, August 29, 1937, Lodge Collection, UCL
(emphasis in original).
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724 Sungook Hong
audience, he used a mirror galvanometer to show the signals.
Leaving aside Aitken's first evidence (a short article in the
Electrician) until a later section of this article on Marconi's
patent, I shall examine Lodge's Royal Institution and British
Association lectures in 1894. We will see that both assertions are
incorrect.
LodgeS Experiments with Hertzian Waves
Oliver Lodge, an ambitious Maxwellian and professor of physics
at University College, Liverpool, worked on the various
characteristics of Hertzian waves between 1888 and 1894. The links
between optics and electromagnetism particularly attracted him. The
subject was faithfully Maxwellian, as it had a root in Maxwell's
doctrine that light and elec- tromagnetic waves were the same. It
was also truly Lodgian "imperial science," as it led electrical
science to the conquest of other fields-in this case, optics and
physiology. The subject came to be divided into two parts: first,
the physical investigation of the quasi-optical property of
electro- magnetic waves-that is, reflection, refraction, and
polarization of the electromagnetic waves in air, in other media,
and in some cases along the wires; second, the physiological
investigation of the mechanism of the perception of light (color,
intensity, and so on) by human eyes.'"
With these experiments, Lodge made two important advances.
First, he constructed a radiator that generated waves with
wavelengths of several inches. Hertz had once used the wavelength
of 66 centimeters, but that was still too long for most optical
experiments. Because of the difficulty in decreasing the wavelength
with Hertz's dipole radiator, Lodge turned to a spherical radiator.
In 1890, Lodge used three 12-centimeter balls and obtained
17-centimeter waves, "the shortest yet dealt with."'7 Lodge then
went further along this line of develop- ment and devised two more
spherical radiators that he exhibited in his Friday Evening Lecture
on the "Work of Hertz" at the Royal Institution in June 1894.
Lodge's second line of research was on detectors. The Hertzian
wave was at first detected by a small spark-gap resonator. But this
spark-gap
'"For Lodge's early conceptions of electromagnetic waves, see
Jed Z. Buchwald, "Wave Guides and Radiators in Maxwellian
Electrodynamics," published as app. 1 to his The Creation of
Scientific Effects: Heinrich Hertz and Electric Waves (Chicago,
1994). See also Hunt, The Maxwellians (n. 6 above), pp. 24-47.
Lodge's research after 1888 is best described in Aitken, Syntony
and Spark (n. 4 above), pp. 80-102. Lodge's program with Hertzian
waves, as well as his concept of "imperial science," was
promulgated in Oliver Lodge, Modern Views of Electricity (London,
1889), pp. 303-7. For the early quasi-optical experiments with
Hertzian waves, see John F. Ramsay, "Microwave Antenna and
Waveguide Technique before 1900, " Proceedings of the IRE 46
(1958): 405-15.
'7Oliver Lodge, "Electric Radiation from Conducting Spheres, an
Electric Eye, and a
Suggestion regarding Vision," Nature 41 (1890): 462-63.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 725
resonator was not suitable for Lodge's physiological research.
For example, nothing in the spark-gap detector corresponded to
different color perceptions in human eyes. Lodge, therefore,
concentrated on the construction of an "electric eye." In 1890, his
assistant Edward Robinson constructed a "gradated receiver," and
Lodge tried "a series of long cylinders" of various diameters. The
principle of both detectors was to make each of them respond to a
specific radiation, forming "an electric eye with a definite range
of colour sensation." In 1891 Lodge exhibited an electric eye of
Robinson's type at the Physical Society, London, which had "strips
of tin foil of different lengths attached to a glass plate, and
spark gaps at each end which separate them from other pieces of
foil."'
Yet, it was not the electric-eye resonator that was associated
with the name of Lodge. Rather, it was the coherer. To understand
Lodge's coherer, we need to examine its prehistory briefly. In
1890, while experimenting on lightning rods, Lodge found that two
metallic conductors separated by a very tiny air gap were fused
when the oscillatory discharge passed through them. At that time,
Lodge accepted David Hughes's explanation that this was a
thermoelectric phenomenon and dropped the subject. In 1890, Edouard
Branly in France found that fine copper filings, capsuled into a
glass tube, were conducting only feebly under ordinary conditions
but that their conductivity was abruptly increased when a spark was
generated nearby. Branly's tube was introduced in Britain when the
Electrician fully translated his articles with figures, but they
were apparently overlooked at that time. The tube was noticed
later, however, by Dawson Turner, who demonstrated the decrease of
the resistance of copper filings at the British Association meeting
in Edinburgh in 1892. Turner's demonstration was seen by W. B.
Croft, who addressed a short experiment on the same phenom- enon
before the Physical Society, London, in October 1893. There, George
M. Minchin, one of those interested in Hertzian waves, noticed the
similarity between Croft's (actually Branly's) tube and his solar
cell's response to Hertzian waves. Minchin immediately read a paper
on the subject at the Physical Society. While hearing Minchin's
paper, Lodge noticed that Branly's and Minchin's discovery was very
similar to his previous research on the action of lightning
discharge to a very tiny metallic gap. Lodge reasoned that
electromagnetic radiation made the metallic molecules both in the
filings and in the microscopic air gap actually cohere with one
another. Based on this similarity, Lodge soon devised a
single-point contact "coherer," in which a spring wire formed a
slight contact with an aluminum plate, and soon found that its
'sIbid.; and Oliver Lodge, "Some Experiments with Leyden Jars"
(abstract), Nature 43 (1891): 238-39.
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-
726 Sungook Hong
sensitivity as a detector was not only much better than ordinary
spark-gap resonators but also better than Branly's filing
tube."9
Lodge therefore had two new detectors, his coherer and Branly's
tube. Initially, Lodge called only his single-point detector a
coherer, but the name "coherer" soon came to designate both types.
Both Lodge's coherer and Branly's tube were connected in series to
a battery and a galvanometer. Under this condition, they act like
an on-off switch: before a Hertzian wave strikes them, their
resistances are very high, as if the switch were off, but when a
Hertzian wave strikes them, their resistances fall off, as if the
switch were turned on. This action makes the current flow from a
battery, and the current can be detected by a galvanometer. The two
detectors, however, differed in sensitivity. At Liverpool on April
17, 1894, Lodge found that the filing tube could detect radiation
emitted from 40 yards away. However, "a sender in Zoology Theatre
affected the coherer in Physics Theatre perceptibly," a distance of
perhaps 70 yards.20 Though more sensitive, Lodge's coherer was less
stable than the filing tube. In addition, Branly's tube had a crude
metrical character: its decrease in resistance seemed roughly
proportional to the intensity of the Hertzian waves. This resembled
a human eye's perception of the light of different intensity. For
physi- ological experiments, therefore, Branly's tube was more
suitable than Lodge's single-point contact coherer.
On January 1, 1894, Hertz died at the age of 36, and Lodge
delivered a Hertz Memorial Lecture at the Royal Institution Friday
Evening Lecture on June 1. Here Lodge spoke on the life and work of
Hertz, exhibited Hertz's and his own radiators and detectors, and
then performed several experiments.21 The demonstrations were
divided into a physical and a physiological part. In the first
part, he demonstrated reflection, refraction, and polarization of
the Hertzian waves. For this purpose, Lodge used his spherical
radiator enclosed in a metallic box
'9For Lodge's experiments on the air gap of lightning
conductors, see Oliver Lodge, "On
Lightning-Guards for Telegraphic Purposes and on the Protection
of Cables from Light- ning," Journal of the Institution of
Electrical Engineers 19 (1890): 346-79, on 352-53. For the
story of Branly's tube in Britain, see Oliver Lodge, "The
History of the Coherer Principle," Electrician 40 (1897): 87-91.
Refer also to E. Branly's papers under the title "Variations of
Conductivity under Electrical Influence," Electrician 27 (1891):
221-22, 448-49. Also useful is Vivian J. Phillips, Early Radio Wave
Detectors (London, 1980), pp. 18-37.
'Rowlands (n. 5 above), pp. 116-17. 21The lecture, "The Work of
Hertz," was published in Nature, the Electrician (with
illustrations), and later in the Proceedings of the Royal
Institution. The reference here is to Oliver Lodge, "The Work of
Hertz," Nature 50 (1894): 133-39. The lecture, with
appendixes, was published in 1894 as a book, The Work of Hertz
and Some of His Successors (London, 1894). From the third edition
(1900), its title was changed to Signalling through Space without
Wires.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 727
paraffin prism O Q a 6" spherical galvanometer radiator in a
metallic box
polarization grating
a Bfanly tube in a copper hat
FIG. 2.--Oliver Lodge's quasi-optical experiment with Hertzian
waves at the Royal Institution in June 1894. A spherical radiator
is in a metallic box, and a Branly tube is in a copper hat. Notice
the mirror galvanometer. (Electrician 33 [1894]: 205.)
and a Branly tube in a copper hat as a detector, and a mirror
galvanom- eter as a signal indicator (fig. 2). In the second part,
he explained the function of human eyes by means of the analogy of
the coherer. "When light falls upon the retina," Lodge said, "these
gaps become more or less conducting, and the nerves are
stimulated."'' Lodge also tried an outdoor experiment, in which the
receiver was in the theater and the transmitter was in the library
of the Royal Institution, separated across 40 yards by three rooms
and stairs. I shall return to this outdoor experiment after
examining Lodge's other demonstrations.
The coherer, in particular the Branly tube, had a character that
was absent in the spark-gap resonator. After detecting
electromagnetic waves, the coherer needed to be mechanically
vibrated or "tapped" to make it ready for the next wave trains.
This feature raised a question with relation to physiological
concerns. To what, in human eyes, did this tapping correspond?
Lodge assumed that, in the eye, "the tapping back is done
automatically by the tissues, so that it is always ready for a new
impression." How to demonstrate this automatic tapping in human
eyes? Lodge prepared an electric bell, which was mounted on the
same board as the filing tube. By constantly vibrating itself, and
thus by constantly shaking the table and the coherer on it, the
bell always made the coherer ready to detect new waves.23
Was Lodge's lecture successful? It is true that the published
abstracts in Nature and the Electrician were read worldwide.
Nevertheless, the
nLodge, "Work of Hertz," p. 137. "Ibid. It is noteworthy that
the bell was neither connected to the coherer circuit nor
tapped the coherer directly.
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728 Sungook Hong demonstrations were rather unsuccessful. The
Electrician noted that "the experiments were performed under very
unfavourable conditions.""24 Moreover, the "lack of enthusiasm" in
Lodge's lecture was contrasted with the success of Nikola Tesla's
lecture a year earlier, where "the weird waving of glowing tubes in
the suitably darkened room" impressed everyone. What Lodge lacked
was a "theatrical effect" or "scenic setting." Neither the sound of
the spark nor the "moderate galvanometer" connected to the coherer
was theatrical. In particular, the galvanometer was very tricky. It
proved to be a "very lively kind of galvanometer" for the coherer
circuit. The swing of the needle was not stable, not even when
there were no waves. For success subsequently, the Electrician
suggested using a more effective galvanometer such as a deadbeat
galvanometer.
No detailed descriptions about the galvanometer used by Lodge
survive. From the abstract and the figure, we see that Lodge used a
mirror galva- nometer.25 From the comment in the Electrician, we
understand that it was not of a deadbeat type. From other pieces of
evidence, we know that Lodge had not paid much attention to the
galvanometer, in contrast to the situation several years earlier.
Before the coherer, for example, FitzGerald, Lodge's closest friend
and professor of natural and experimental philosophy at Trinity
College, Dublin, had constructed an extremely sensitive galvanom-
eter to show to an audience the detection of waves. This instrument
would have needed to detect the disturbance of electric equilibrium
caused by a tiny spark.26 The coherer, an on-off switch, made such
a sensitive galvanom- eter unnecessary, because the galvanometer
had to detect only a relatively large current from a battery,
triggered by the action of the coherer. As Lodge noted, "a rough
galvanometer" was therefore sufficient27
But why was the galvanometer troublesome at the crucial moment?
Lodge suspected that the source of the trouble was the electric
bell used for the automatic tapping. There is a "jerk current" in
the electric bell, which would certainly influence the adjacent
coherer electrically. The jerky current "produces one effect, and a
mechanical vibration ... produces an opposite effect; hence the
spot of light can hardly keep still." He knew the way to eliminate
this: a "clockwork" that did not use an electric current "might do
better."2 As we shall see, Lodge actually employed the clockwork in
his Oxford lecture two months later.
24"Hertzian Waves at the Royal Institution" (lead article),
Electrician 33 (1894): 156-57. "Lodge mentioned "the spot of light"
in a mirror galvanometer. See Lodge, "Work of
Hertz," p. 137. "George F. FitzGerald, "Electro-Magnetic
Radiation" (Friday Evening Lecture at the
Royal Institution on March 21, 1890), Nature 42 (1890): 172-75.
"See also Lodge's exhibition of the portable detector of his
assistant's design at the
Royal Society soiree a few days after his Friday Lecture, in
"The Royal Society Conversazi- one," Nature 50 (1894): 182-83.
"Lodge,"Work of Hertz" (n. 21 above), p. 137.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 729
Now recall Lodge's statement concerning the "Muirhead
connection" in his letter to Fleming. Here Lodge emphasized that in
his Oxford demonstration he used a deadbeat Thomson (Kelvin) marine
galvanom- eter he had borrowed from Muirhead's firm. In 1900 Lodge
stated that "Dr. Alexander Muirhead foresaw the telegraphic
importance of this method of signalling immediately after hearing
the author's lecture on June 1st, 1894, and arranged a siphon
recorder for the purpose."29 In Lodge's much-quoted letter to one
of his friends in 1914, he emphasized that "it was at the first of
these lectures [Royal Institution Friday Lecture] that my friend
Alexander Muirhead conceived the telegraphic applica- tions which
ultimately led to the foundation of the Lodge-Muirhead
Syndicate."'I Elsewhere, Lodge recalled that the galvanometer at
Oxford "responded to signals sharply, in a dead-beat manner,
without confusing oscillations.""3 This Muirhead connection makes
Lodge's telegraphic trial at Oxford, performed only two months
after his obviously nontelegraphic experiment at the Royal
Institution, both feasible and timely.
Some parts of this Muirhead connection are undoubtedly true.
Muirhead constructed a delicate siphon recorder for a wireless
detector during the late 1890s and early 1900s; Lodge and Muirhead,
who began to file for patents on wireless telegraphy in 1897,
formed the Lodge- Muirhead Syndicate in 1901. Nevertheless, the
central point in the Muirhead connection (that Muirhead lent Lodge
a deadbeat Thomson marine galvanometer after/because he was
inspired by Lodge's June lecture) is very doubtful. According to
the recollection of Muirhead's wife, it was Lodge's Oxford lecture,
not the Royal Institution lecture, that inspired Muirhead to think
about wireless telegraphy." One of Lodge's biographers doubts that
he actually used a Thomson marine deadbeat galvanometer borrowed
from Muirhead at Oxford." But that
"Lodge, Signalling through Space without Wires (n. 21 above), p.
45. Refer also to Oliver Lodge, "Alexander Muirhead" (obituary),
Proceedings of the Royal Society 100, pt. A (1921-22): viii-ix.
SOliver Lodge toJ. Arthur Hill, December 11, 1914, inJ. Arthur
Hill, ed., Letters from Sir Oliver Lodge (London, 1932), p. 47.
3"Oliver Lodge, "Reminiscences of the Last British Association
Meeting in Oxford, 1894," Discovery 7 (August 1926): 263-66 (quoted
on 265-66). See also the same recollection in Oliver Lodge,
Advancing Science (London, 1931), p. 164, and Past Years: An
Autobiography (New York, 1932), p. 231.
3"Muirhead was excited after Lodge's Oxford lecture, and "the
next day he went to Lodge with the suggestion that messages could
be sent by use of these waves to feed cables." See M. E. Muirhead,
Alexander Muirhead (Oxford, 1926), p. 39, quoted in Pocock (n. 5
above), p. 83.
"Rowlands (n. 5 above), p. 148, n. 30. Thomson's marine
galvanometer was a very sensitive current-measuring device
specially designed so that the swing of a ship could not change the
readings. In principle, it utilized rotation of a small magnet
fixed in the middle of the coils by silk fiber. When magnetic
fields were created around the coils by the action
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730 Sungook Hong is, I think, highly plausible, not because
Muirhead had been inspired by Lodge's June lecture, but because
Lodge had borrowed from Muirhead such a device at various times
since the late 1880s.' In addition, as we have seen, Lodge had an
urgent reason to use a deadbeat galvanometer. He had experienced
serious trouble in his "lively kind" galvanometer in the June
lecture, and the Electrician had recommended the employment of a
deadbeat galvanometer for future success. These factors might be
the real motivations for Lodge's use of a Thomson marine
galvanometer at Oxford, if it was actually used there.
Let us return to Lodge's outdoor experiment at the Royal
Institution. Why did Lodge perform this experiment? Evidently, it
was not to determine the maximum transmitting distance, nor to show
the wave's penetrability of walls. Its real purpose lay in
physiological concerns. With a metrical Branly tube and an electric
bell, Lodge wanted to show that the coherer could discern Hertzian
waves of various intensities Oust as the human eye could). The
easiest way to vary the intensity of waves was to adjust the
distance between transmitter and receiver. Lodge placed a 6-inch
sphere radiator in the library of the Royal Institution, which had
two advantages. First, owing to the theory of Horace Lamb and J.J.
Thomson, it was easy to estimate the wavelength: with a 6-inch
radiator, the wavelength was about 8 or 9 inches. Second, owing to
FitzGerald's theory, it was known that the energy of radiation at a
distance, other things being equal, is inversely proportional to
the fourth power of the wavelength. That is, the shorter the
wavelength, the more the energy of radiation, and thus the higher
the possibility of being detected at a distance. The belief that
short waves had more power to travel farther than long waves was
strongly inscribed in Lodge's mind.35 But even with the short wave,
Lodge estimated that "something more like half a mile
of current, the small magnet was forced to rotate, and this
effect was magnified by the reflection of a ray of light from a
small mirror fastened to the magnet. For a detailed
description of the device, see George B. Prescott, Electricity
and the Electric Telegraph (New York, 1888), pp. 154-57.
"See, e.g. Lodge, Modern Views of Electricity (n. 16 above), p.
300, where Lodge used the Thomson marine galvanometer lent by
Muirhead for his experiments on electric momentum. Notice also that
their business relation started around the same time with the
construction of Lodge's lightning guard by the Muirhead Company.
For this, see Oliver Lodge, Lightning Conductors and Lightning
Guards (London, 1892), pp. 419-26. I thank Ido Yavetz for this
reference.
35Horace Lamb, "On Electrical Motion in a Spherical Conductor,"
Philosophical Trans- actions of the Royal Society 174, pt. 2
(1883): 519-49; J.J. Thomson, "On Electrical Oscillations and the
Effects Produced by the Motion of an Electrified Sphere,"
Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 15 (1883/84):
197-219. For FitzGerald's theory, see
George F. FitzGerald, "On the Quantity of Energy Transferred to
the Ether by a Variable Current," Transactions of the Royal Dublin
Society (1883), in The Scientific Writings of the Late
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 731
was nearer the limit of sensitiveness," even though he appended
that "this is a rash statement not at present verified.""
What was the result of this first outdoor experiment? Was it
success- ful? Lodge and his friends later repeated that the
experiment was a great success. The answer was, however, both yes
and no: no, because he failed to detect the wave with a metrical
filing tube; yes, because he detected it with his sensitive
coherer. Lodge's manuscript confirms this: "The spherical radiator
... though it could excite the filings tube ... when 60 yards away
in the open air, yet could not excite it perceptibly when screened
off by so many walls and metal surfaces as exist between the
Library and Theatre of the Royal Institution. It could, however,
still easily excite the coherer, which is immensely more sensitive,
and also more troublesome and occasionally capricious than is a
tube of iron filings.""7 With this experiment he was thus unable to
show the metrical response of the Branly filing tube to radiations
of various intensities.
Two months later, on August 14, 1894, at the joint session of
the Physics and Physiology sections of the British Association,
Lodge deliv- ered two lectures and demonstrations on Hertzian waves
at the theater in the museum of Oxford University. The first
lecture was on "Experi- ments Illustrating Clerk Maxwell's Theory
of Light"; the second was on "An Electrical Theory of Vision." In a
sense, he split his previous Friday Lecture into two. In the first
lecture, Lodge used a spherical radiator and a copper hat to
concentrate the radiation. As before, Branly's tube and Lodge's
coherer were used as detectors, with most experiments done with
Branly's device. Refractions and reflections of Hertzian waves were
demonstrated with lenses, gold papers, the human body, paraffin
prisms, and a slab of wood. Polarization was shown with a copper
wire polarizer; splitting of the polarized ray into the two
elliptically polarized rays was also demonstrated. These
experiments were "very beautifully, very carefully and very
convincingly demonstrated," and "the audience ... repeatedly showed
its warm appreciation." Lodge's employment of a deadbeat
galvanometer might have been a reason for the success.'
Geoge Francis FitzGerald, ed. Joseph Lamor (London, 1902), pp.
122-26. For Lodge, see Lodge, Advancing Science (n. 31 above), p.
165.
6Lodge, "Work of Hertz" (n. 21 above), pp. 135-37. 37Oliver
Lodge, "Notes on the History of the Coherer Method of Detecting
Hertzian
Waves and other Similar Matters" (n.d.), Lodge Collection, UCL.
In the published article, a similar paragraph read, "Almost any
filing tube could detect signals from a distance of 60 yards, with
a mere six-inch sphere as emitter and without the slightest
trouble, but the single-point coherer was usually much more
sensitive than any filing tube." See Lodge, "History of the Coherer
Principle" (n. 19 above), p. 90.
'Since the lectures were not published, I rely on the brief
reports of the meetings of the British Association published in
Nature, Electrician, Engineering, and London Times, all of
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-
732 Sungook Hong These were really "the prologue" of Lodge's
second lecture and
demonstrations. In this lecture, Lodge proposed his hypothesis
concern- ing the theory of vision that the coherer circuit "may be
taken as an analogous, and may, ex hypothesi, be an enlarged model
of the mecha- nism of vision." According to this hypothesis, "the
retinal elements constitute an imperfect conductor, and ... the
light waves would cause a sudden diminution in the resistance of
the elements."Yet, once struck by the wave, the coherer "has a
tendency to persist in its lessened resistance" and therefore
requires tapping "to jerk the coherer contact back to its normal
state of badness." For this tapping, he used "a sort of clockwork
apparatus which automatically produces the tap every tenth of a
second." With this device, Lodge showed that "for a continuous
radiation the coherer showed continuous indications, which died
away when the radiation ceased.""
Where was the transmitter in the physiological experiments? The
issue has never been examined critically. Four years later, in
1898, Thompson-Lodge's close friend and professor of applied
physics and electrical engineering of the Finsbury Technical
College-commented that the radiator was in the Clarendon
Laboratory, the building adjacent to the museum, at a distance of
200 yards." I believe that Thompson's statement may be erroneous,
because Lodge, in his various recollec- tions, never mentioned the
Clarendon Laboratory. He would only remark that "in both cases,
signalling was easily carried on from a distance through walls and
other obstacles, an emitter being outside and a galvanometer
detector inside the room," or that "this [sending] apparatus was in
another room."41 Contrary to Lodge's and Thompson's remarks, the
four sources on which I have relied for my account say nothing
about the outdoor trial at all. Considering this evidence, as well
as Lodge's previous trouble with the outdoor experiment at the
Royal Institution, it may be said that the distance traversed by
Hertzian waves in the Oxford lecture was fairly modest.
The lecture was followed by heated discussions by such
physicists as Lord Rayleigh, Henry E. Armstrong, and FitzGerald,
and the physiolo-
which sent their reporters to the British Association. See
"Physics at the British Association," Nature 50 (1894): 408; "The
British Association at Oxford: Tuesday, August 14th," Electrician
33 (1894): 458-59; "The British Association, Section A: Electric
Theory of Vision," Engineering 58 (1894): 382-83; "The British
Association," London Times, August 15, 1894.
3g"The British Association at Oxford: Tuesday, August 14," p.
458; "The British Association, Section A: Electric Theory of
Vision"; London Times, August 15, 1894.
"Silvanus P. Thompson, "Telegraphy Across Space" (lecture given
at the Royal Society of Arts on March 30, 1898), Journal of the
Society of Arts 40 (1897/98): 453-60, esp. 458.
4Lodge, "History of the Coherer Principle" (n. 19 above), p. 90,
and Past Years (n. 31 above), p. 231.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 733
gists Burdon Sanderson and Edward A. Sharpey-Schifer, marking a
great success. But that was all. There is not the slightest hint of
telegraphic signals, nor "dots and dashes." With his improved
automatic tapper, Lodge showed the persistency of vision and mere
sensation of light, which corresponded to the continuous and short
indication of the galvanometer. But that was far from dots and
dashes for alphabetic signals. From beginning to end, the lecture
was entirely "Lodgian." His purpose was to investigate the relation
between optics and electromag- netism, between light and
electromagnetic waves, and between optical receptors and
electromagnetic ones. After the lecture, despite Muir- head's and
Rayleigh's suggestions, Lodge did not pursue this subject further.
He soon busied himself with ether experiments, X-rays, and psychic
researches.
The preceding examination has shown that Lodge's first argument,
namely, that he actually transmitted dots and dashes for alphabetic
signals in the Oxford meeting, is doubtful. Let us next examine
Lodge's second argument about "a Morse instrument," mentioned in
his letter to Fleming. Fleming thought that this instrument must be
a Morse inker. But it was not. Ironically, Aitken's first source
reveals its nature. It listed five instruments used in Lodge's
Oxford demonstrations, and one of them is "Morse instrument to
shake the filings"42 (emphasis added). Lodge's Morse instrument was
nothing but a clockwork or an automatic tapper that he used for
tapping the coherer. To be sure, the Morse instrument that Lodge
used for the clockwork was a telegraphic device, but he used this
telegraphic device for nontelegraphic purposes, as confirmed by
himself in his description of the automatic tapper in the Oxford
meeting: "The tapping back was at first performed by hand ... but
automatic tappers were very soon arranged; ... an electric bell was
not found very satisfactory, however, because of the disturbances
caused by the little spark at its contact breaker ... so a
clockwork tapper, consisting of a rotating spoke wheel driven by
the clockwork of a Morse instrument, and giving to the filings tube
or to a coherer a series of jerks occurring at regular intervals
... was also employed."" The "Morse instrument" was neither a Morse
inker nor a substitute for a galvanometer. To understand how a
clockwork was transformed into a Morse detector, we now examine the
impact of Marconi's wireless telegraphy on the British
Maxwellians.
Marconi, Preece, the Maxwellians, and "Practice versus Theory"
Since 1886, Lodge and his Maxwellian friends, Oliver Heaviside
(1850-1925) in particular, had been involved in a bitter
controversy-
4"Dr. Oliver Lodge's Apparatus for Wireless Telegraphy" (n. 9
above), p. 686. eLodge, "History of the Coherer Principle," p. 90
(emphasis added).
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-
734 Sungook Hong the so-called Practice vs. Theory
controversy--with William H. Preece (1834-1913), an eminent
practical telegrapher of the Post Office. The issues of the
controversy involved the role of the self-induction of lines and
its implication in long-distance telephony and lightning conduc-
tors. Heaviside's counterintuitive, theoretical claim for the
beneficial effect of self-induction for long-distance telephony was
severely rebuked by Preece, who based his argument on his practice
and experience in the field. The news that Hertz had discovered
Maxwell's electromagnetic waves was known to them in 1888, when
Lodge was attempting to generate and detect electromagnetic waves
on wires with Leyden-jar discharge. Even though Hertz deprived
Lodge of credit for the discovery of electromagnetic waves, and
even though the electromagnetic wave was not directly related to
the controversies, Hertz's discovery certainly had a favorable
impact for the Maxwellians, allowing them to defeat Preece. The
most important part of Maxwell's theory was proved, and it was
followed by Sir William Thomson's warm recognition of Heaviside's
mathematical work in 1889, marking the victory of the theoretical
men over practicians. Hertz's discovery of Maxwell's
electromagnetic waves was timely and was good for
theoreticians."
In 1896, Marconi came to England with his "secret box" (see fig.
3). In July 1896, Preece, then chief engineer of the Post Office,
became Marconi's first, and most potent, patron. As Preece had had
interests in induction telegraphy for several years, he might have
realized a possi- bility of commercial wireless telegraphy in
Marconi's demonstration. But in Marconi's apparatus Preece saw more
than commercial possibil- ity; it was a good means of revenge
against the theoretical camp of the Maxwellians. Like Preece
himself, Marconi was "what Mr. Oliver Heavi- side calls a
'practician,' " who knew nothing about Maxwell's mathemati- cal
theory and perhaps little about Hertz's physical experiments. But
Marconi had developed the Hertzian wave telegraphy, which Lodge had
failed to do. To Preece, Marconi's success was a marvelous example
of the superiority of practice over theory. The Hertzian wave that
had defeated Preece in 1888 now became his weapon.45
"For this controversy, see Bruce J. Hunt, " 'Practice vs.
Theory': The British Electrical Debate, 1888-1891," Isis 74 (1983):
341-55; D.W. Jordan, "The Adoption of Self- Induction by Telephony,
1886-1889," Annals of Science 39 (1982): 433-61; Ido Yavetz,
"Oliver Heaviside and the Significance of the British Electrical
Debate," Annals of Science 50 (1993): 135-73.
'For the description of Marconi as "practician," see "Notes,"
Electrician 39 (1897): 207. Different opinions have existed about
the relation between Preece and Marconi. Aitken, in Syntony and
Spark (n. 4 above), pp. 210-16, suggests that Preece's interest
came from the "bureaucratic responsibility" of Preece and the Post
Office to oversee the development of all forms of electric
communication in Britain. Based on the manuscripts of the Post
Office, Pocock shows that Preece was rather cool toward the Marconi
system's commercial
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 735
-L
FIG. 3.-Marconi in 1896 with his "secret box" closed. (Courtesy
of the Marconi Company Archives, Chelmsford.)
At the meeting of the British Association in Liverpool in
September 1896, Preece prepared two counterattacks. First, based on
the observa- tions of various submarine cables, he attacked
Heaviside's mathematical theory of distortionless cables and
advocated his own empirical law." Then, in his discussion of J.
Chunder Bose's paper, Preece stated that "an Italian had come with
a box giving a quite new system of space telegraphy," advertising
Marconi's splendid success in transmitting across 1? miles on
Salisbury Plain.47 Preece's announcement astonished most
Maxwellians, as shown in the following quote from a letter from
possibility and then argues that Preece in fact followed the
policy of the Post Office to new
inventions--"neither to accept the invention, nor to invest
substantial sums" without entirely ignoring it altogether. See
Pocock (n. 5 above), pp. 114-17. But Pocock seems to feel the
difficulty in explaining why Preece ardently advertised Marconi in
the British Association and in his public lectures. The difficulty
disappears if the personal factors are counted in. Among secondary
materials, Paul Nahin, Oliver Heaviside: Sage in Solitude (New
York, 1988), p. 281, mentions this possibility.
"William H. Preece, "On Disturbance in Submarine Cables," Annual
Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
(1896): 732 (title only), and "Electrical Distur- bances in
Submarine Cables," Electrician 37 (1896): 689-91.
47Lodge, Advancing Science (n. 31 above), p. 168. See also
"Physics at the British Association," Nature 54 (1896): 567; "The
British Association," London Times, September 23, 1896; "Notes,"
Electrician 37 (1896): 685. Preece also mentioned Marconi's
parabolic antenna in the transmitter and a relay and a Morse inker
in the receiver.
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736 Sungook Hong FitzGerald to Heaviside: "On the last day but
one Preece surprised us all by saying that he had taken up an
Italian adventurer who had done no more than Lodge & others had
done in observing Hertzian radiations at a distance. Many of us
were very indignant at this over-looking of British work for an
Italian manufacturer. Science 'made in Germany' we are accustomed
to but 'made in Italy' by an unknown firm was too bad."'4 According
to the later recollection, Lodge did not get up to refute Preece,
who was "far more ignorant than he ought to have been of what had
been already done," but "retired to [his] laboratory and rigged up
an arrangement which I showed to Lord Kelvin and a few others,
saying 'This is what Preece was talking about.' "49
In December 1896, Preece again publicized Marconi's feat in his
public lecture at Toynbee Hall and promised there to spare no
expense for Marconi's research. This promise especially upset the
Maxwellians, because they were then engaged in difficult
negotiations with the British government to secure financial
support (?35,000) for the establishment of the National Physical
Laboratory (NPL). Lodge had initiated the movement in 1891 at the
British Association's annual meeting. When it was revived in 1895
by Douglas Galton, Lodge was appointed as secretary of the British
Association Committee on the Establishment of an NPL. FitzGerald
had also emphasized the role of science in industrial development."
The Maxwellians were at first nervous about Preece, who
continuously publicized Marconi as the "inventor of wireless
telegra- phy," and who, as an influential person at the Post
Office, ignored the role of scientific research. Yet, their
attitude to Marconi was not very hostile initially. In March 1897,
in a letter to Thompson, Lodge expressed his hope that "M[arconi]
is improving things all around & going to bring it in
commercially." It was certainly because Lodge thought that "there
will be many improvements in details wanted before that can be
done.""' But things were moving rapidly. Somebody had coined and
publicized the term "Marconi waves"; Marconi approved of it. In an
interview with McClureS Magazine, Marconi remarked that his wave
from the vertical antenna was not same as Hertz's wave. He
"George F FitzGerald to Oliver Heaviside, September 28, 1896,
Heaviside Collection, Institution of Electrical Engineers,
London.
"4Lodge to Fleming, August 26, 1937 (n. 14 above). Lodge's
remark on Preece is in
Lodge to Hill, December 11, 1914 (n. 30 above). 5Oliver Lodge,
"Presidential Address in Section A," Annual Report of the British
Association
for the Advancement of Science (1891): 550-51; George F.
FitzGerald, "Science and Industry" (lecture to the Irish Industrial
League on May 7, 1896), in Scientific Writings (n. 35 above), p.
383. For the NPL, see also E. Pyatt, The National Physical
Laboratory: A History (Bristol, 1983), pp. 12-35.
51Oliver Lodge to Silvanus P. Thompson, March 16, 1897, Lodge
Collection, UCL.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 737
emphasized that his wave could penetrate almost everything.5'
This strange comment was accompanied by his splendid practical
successes. In March 1897 Marconi succeeded in transmitting over 4
miles; he conquered 8 miles of the Bristol Channel in May. Popular
reports poured forth, and public interest in wireless telegraphy
ran high.
With his secret box and vertical antenna, Marconi pulled the
Hertzian waves out of the scientific laboratories. At first, as is
often the case, scientists were not very effective outside their
laboratories. Nobody could exactly guess what constituted Marconi's
secret box. Nobody could explain why the Marconi wave could
communicate across build- ings and even high hills. Most important,
it was not certain why only Marconi could send the messages over
several miles when all others had failed.53 The views of scientific
authorities on Hertzian waves no longer held. Instead, a practical
success, along with public recognition, became the new authority.
As the editorial of the Electrician remarked, "Professor Marconi,"
along with Tesla and Edison, had become an authority on electrical
science to the British public, instead of Lord Kelvin, George G.
Stokes, and H. von Helmholtz.' An invisible battle between theory
and practice was under way.
On June 4, 1897, Preece had planned a lecture on the "Signalling
through Space without Wires." This was the first Friday Lecture on
wireless telegraphy. Having heard this news, Lodge sent Preece a
copy of his Friday Lecture in 1894, "to remind him" of what Lodge
had already done.55 In the lecture, Preece compared Marconi to
Columbus and applauded Marconi's feat as "a new system of
telegraphy." From Lodge's 1894 lecture, Preece quoted Lodge's
comment that "half a mile was nearer the limit of sensibility" and
then proudly declared that "half a
5"When asked about the difference, Marconi answered, "I don't
know. I am not a scientist, but I doubt if any scientist can tell
you." See H. J. W. Dam, "Telegraphy without Wires: A Possibility of
Electrical Science. II. The New Telegraphy-Interview with Signor
Marconi," McClure' Magazine 8 (March 1897): 389-92. On an episode
of how much the "Marconi wave" upset Silvanus Thompson, see Jane
Smeal Thompson and Helen G. Thompson, Silvanus Phillips Thompson:
His Life and Letters (New York, 1920), p. 81.
53Concerning Marconi's secret box, there was an interesting
story. When Frederick T. Trouton, an assistant of FitzGerald, found
an ordinary glass-tube coherer in Marconi's secret box, Marconi
slammed it down again, saying, "you would steal my invention." On
this, see Jolly, Sir Oliver Lodge (n. 5 above), p. 148. FitzGerald
seems to have first solved the puzzle of the Marconi system. He
analyzed that "what Marconi is doing with his kites, poles &c
&c, is to manufacture an enormous radiator and it is not the
short waves of his double ball arrangement that he is emitting and
receiving but the very much longer waves of his whole system. By
connecting to earth he uses the earth as the second plate of his
transmitter.... Anyway a big open system is the thing." See George
E FitzGerald to Oliver Lodge, October 30, 1897, Lodge Collection,
UCL.
""The Man in the Street of Science" (lead article), Electrician
39 (1897): 546-47. 55Oliver Lodge to Silvanus P. Thompson, June 1,
1897, Lodge Collection, UCL.
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738 Sungook Hong mile was the wildest dream." By doing so,
Preece successfully derided a theoretician's rash prediction and
"scored an effective hit.",%
The lecture was a blow not only to Lodge but also to most
British Maxwellians who had engaged in controversy with Preece
several years before. "Preece is," FitzGerald wrote to Lodge
indignantly, "distinctly and intentionally scoffing at scientific
men and deserves severe re- buke."57 Lodge was concerned about his
credits as a mediator between pure scientific research and
commercial wireless telegraphy. In his immediate response as a
letter to the London Times, Lodge explained that the prediction of
a half mile was "a scientific one, concerning the small and early
apparatus." He emphasized that he himself showed "the same plan of
signalling in 1894." Lodge also emphasized that Marconi's coherer
had been used by Rayleigh and Lodge himself.8
Lodge here tried two different, but related, strategies. The
first was to stress the essential similarity of his 1894
experiments to Marconi's telegraphy. As Lodge reminded Thompson,
"we had the automatic tapping back in '94 at Oxford; ... we have
really had the tapper worked as a relay too & collectors to the
coherer; in fact, the whole thing except the best conducting vacuum
coherer."59 Lodge's second strategy was to find the connection
between the efforts of the British scientific men like Lodge and
Marconi's wireless telegraphy. But neither of these two strategies
was easy. Lodge's 1894 lectures were not of a telegraphic nature at
all, and the connections of the British scientists with Marconi
were too indirect. Frederick T. Trouton, an assistant of
FitzGerald, had advised Marconi in 1893 or 1894 via one of
Marconi's friends. But Trouton's advice proved neither scientific
nor of the technical kind." Such efforts, however, became
meaningless after Marconi's patent was accepted. The impact of
Marconi's patent was much more profound than his practical
successes.
Marconi Patent "for Everything" On June 16, 1897, about two
weeks after Preece's Royal Institution
lecture, and two weeks before the final acceptance of Marconi's
patent, an interesting demonstration was held at the Royal Society
soiree. In the entrance hall, Preece and Marconi demonstrated
wireless telegraphy in their receptive method of "Signalling
through Space without Wires"; on
."Notes" (n. 45 above). For Preece's Friday Lecture, see William
H. Preece, "Signalling through Space without Wires," Electrician 39
(1897): 216-18. The lecture was later published in the Proceedings
of the Royal Institution 15 (1896/97): 467-76.
57George F. FitzGerald to Oliver Lodge, June 21, 1897, Lodge
Collection, UCL. 'Oliver Lodge, "Telegraphy without Wires," London
Times, June 22, 1897. "Lodge to Thompson, June 1, 1897 (n. 55
above). "FitzGerald to Lodge, June 21, 1897 (n. 57 above).
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 739
the second floor, Muirhead demonstrated the same "as practised
by Dr. Oliver Lodge in 1894."Here, Muirhead used a Branly tube and
a Morse inker, and Preece and Marconi used a Morse sounder. The
distances between the transmitters and the receivers were about 100
feet. Accord- ing to the Electrician's judgment, "Lodge's system
worked satisfactorily," and "the marking of the signals on the
ribbon were undoubtedly distinct and readable.""61
From this brief description, we can notice that Alexander
Muirhead had collaborated with Lodge, igniting the competition
between Marconi's and Lodge's method. About a month earlier, Lodge
had filed a patent on the "Improvements in Syntonized Telegraphy
without Line Wires." As the tide indicates, the principle of
syntony or tuning by varying the inductance of the transmitter and
the receiver was its central part. The patent is now famous as the
first patent on syntony. But its provisional specification claimed
more than that. Another important claim was on Lodge's improve-
ment of Branly's tube filings and its use as a detector. Lodge also
made a claim on his tapping device such as an electric bell and a
clockwork. In short, the patent was on the Lodgian system of
wireless telegraphy.62
Marconi had filed his provisional specification on June 2, 1896,
about a year before Lodge's patent. There was no doubt that
Marconi's patent was the first patent on Hertzian wave telegraphy,
but there existed much doubt about its power. For Marconi's success
to be continued commer- cially, the patent had to be strong enough
to overcome the subsequent litigation. But its provisional
specification shows the immature Mar- conism clearly. For instance,
as Aitken points out, it contains such passages as " when
transmitting through the earth or water I connect one end of the
tube or contact to earth and the other to conductors" (emphasis
added). This illustrates Marconi's early conviction that waves from
a vertical antenna were different from Hertzian waves." In
addition, an automatic tapper of Marconi's own design, operated by
the relay current, was described side by side with an independent
trembler of Lodge's clockwork type. If he had committed the same
mistake in the complete specification, he would have invalidated
his patent.
61"Notes" (n. 45 above), p. 237. See also "The Royal Society
Conversazione," Nature 56 (1897): 185.
6Oliver Lodge, "Improvements in Syntonized Telegraphy without
Line Wires," no. 11,575, Provisional Specification (date of
application, May 10, 1897), and Complete Specification (February 5,
1898; date of acceptance, August 10, 1898). For Lodge's syntony,
see Aitken, Syntony and Spark (n. 4 above), pp. 130-42.
OAitken, Syntony and Spark, pp. 285-86, n. 12. See also
Guglielmo Marconi, "Improve- ments in Transmitting Electrical
Impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus Therefor, " no. 12,039,
Provisional Specification (date of application, June 2, 1896). The
content of the patent, of course, had been kept secret until its
complete specification was accepted on July 2, 1897.
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740 Sungook Hong Without doubt, Marconi could safely patent two
things: a tapper
activated by the relay current," and an antenna, that is, the
aerial and the earth connection for the transmitter and the
coherer." Except for these two, the matter was extremely uncertain.
His transmitter was of the Righi type, his detector was an improved
Branly filing-tube coherer, and his relay and inker were ordinary
telegraphic devices. The coherer was most problematic. Even though
the British patent on invention was given to the one who had first
applied for it rather than to the person who had first invented the
device or published it, it was generally believed that Marconi's
claim on the coherer must be a modest one, restricting his claim to
the improvement of its sensitivity. Even expert opinion was
vacillating, as is shown by the following remark of FitzGerald:
Trouton was sufficiently impressed with its [Marconi's secret
box's] value to venture some money in the concern. Since finding
out how the thing is really worked he has become much more doubtful
as to the validity of the patents and has refused to put any more
money into it. It is all a question of patent rights and may depend
on such a question as that mercury [in the coherer] is important in
order to make the thing work with certainty and that a hammer
worked by the relay itself is important and so forth. If these
things are of value and patentable, the patents may be of
considerable importance. Branly's tube, Righi's emitter &c are
all certainly impatentable, but so many things go to make up a
workable invention that Marconi's patents may be valuable."
However, FitzGerald's conclusion was optimistic: "As far as I
can judge from what I am told it is only details that are
patentable and their value is not proved." The editorial opinion of
the Electrician was similar. This predicted that Marconi's patent
would not be a master patent, because the general principles
underlying the apparatus, as well as the appara- tuses themselves,
were not new.67 And there was another factor contrib- uting to such
optimism. Since Marconi was not a man of science, he had probably
committed an error in describing the principle of wireless
telegraphy (as he did in his provisional specification). If such
were the
"Even Lodge admitted Marconi's novelty in the tapping system.
See Oliver Lodge, "Report to the Chief Engineer of the Government
Telegraphs" (June 1900), in ADM. 116. 570, Public Record Office,
London, p. 5.
'For a contemporary witness on Marconi's antenna, see A. Slaby,
"The New Telegraphy: Recent Experiments in Telegraphy with Sparks,"
Century Magazine 55 (April 1898): 867-74, esp. 870-71. Even Lodge
admitted that this was Marconi's highly original novelty. See
Lodge, Signalling through Space without Wires (n. 21 above), p.
47.
"FitzGerald to Lodge, June 21, 1897 (n. 57 above). 67""Notes"
(n. 45 above), p. 431.
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 741
case, the patent would be invalidated. At the very least, this
might leave room for another patent.
The complete specification for Marconi's patent was filed on
March 2, 1897. But, as Aitken comments, it was a "different kind of
document entirely."" Between the provisional and complete
specification, Marconi had secured the crucial assistance ofJ.
Fletcher Moulton, certainly the most famous patent expert in
Britain." Moulton's assistance surprised the Maxwellians. Thompson
wrote to Lodge on June 30, 1897, "I happen to know that Moulton was
called in to advise Marconi on the claim of his final specification
of patent, .... and he advised him to claim everything. I
understand that as the claim was drawn, they claim, for telegraphy,
not only coherers, oscillators, & such like details, but even
Hertz waves! ... there is nothing new except the Hertz wave, the
oscillator & the coherer, and these are not patented nor
patentable."70 Marconi's patent was accepted on July 2, 1897.
Meanwhile, Marconi, who had been under the patronage of Preece and
the Post Office, formed a private company to exploit his
patent.71
As the contents of Marconi's patent were publicized, his secret
box was finally opened (see fig. 4). Marconi detailed his
inventions and attached nineteen claims. To everyone's surprise,
most of these claims were related to coherers and the various
methods of connecting them, such as the ground connection. The
claims were not limited to his improvement, but to the coherer
itself. There were claims on the ball transmitters of Righi type,
relay and hammer tapper, even his improved induction coils and the
antenna (elevated condenser plate, not vertical wire)." In
addition, an awkward expression like "transmitting through earth
and water" was replaced by a more refined expression like
6?Aitken, Syntony and Spark (n. 4 above), p. 204. 'John Fletcher
Moulton (1844-1921) was the first Smith's Prizeman and Senior
Wrangler of the Mathematical Tripos in Cambridge, in 1868. He
soon became Fellow of the Royal Society as a result of his
electrical research and then engaged in legal works. See Hugh
Fletcher Moulton, The Life of Lord Moulton (London, 1922);
Dictionary of National Biography (1912-21), s.v. "John Fletcher
Moulton," pp. 392-94.
"Silvanus P. Thompson to Oliver Lodge, June 30, 1897, Lodge
Collection, UCL. 71It was on July 20, 1897, and the company was the
Wireless Telegraph and Signal
Company. In February 1900 the name was changed to Marconi's
Wireless Telegraph Company. For the early history of the company,
see W.J. Baker, A History of the Marconi Company (London, 1970),
pp. 35 ff.
"Under the British patent system at that time, in which the
comptroller of the Patent Office had no power over the contents of
the patent, an inventor could claim as many inventions as he wanted
in a single specification at his own risk. In cases of some new
inventions, an inventor could deliberately forge the claims with
the effect of monopolizing the "principle" of that invention,
rather than merely a specific artifact. Marconi's patent was close
to such cases. James Watt's powerful patent on his new steam engine
with a separate condenser is another example. Refer to
Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago, 1961),
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742 Sungook Hong
' I M
-,t *,
FIG. 4.-Marconi around 1900 with his "secret box" open.
(Courtesy of the Marconi Company Archives, Chelmsford.)
transmitting "where obstacles, such as many houses or a hill or
moun- tains, intervene between the transmitter and the receiver.""
In terms of scientific principles, there was no mistake. FitzGerald
noted that "Moul- ton has drawn his patents too cutely to commit
him to any particular theory of what he is doing." Even the
critical Electrician appraised the specification as "a model of
perspicuity.""
How did Marconi, who was thought of as a modest and open youth,
dare to claim everything in the Hertzian waves? How did he claim an
originality over the Branly tube that had been used and improved by
Lodge, and over the ball transmitter of Righi type?75 Once
Marconi's widely ranging patent was accepted, Lodge had to withdraw
his claims on the coherer and tapping device in filing his complete
specification the following year. Only the principle of syntony was
left in Lodge's patent. With this defeat, Lodge must have felt an
immense frustration and a feeling of betrayal.
s.v. "Patent," 17:372. See also E. Robinson, "James Watt and the
Law of Patents," Technology and Culture 13 (1972): 115-39.
nGuglielmo Marconi, "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical
Impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus Therefor," no. 12,039,
Complete Specification (March 2, 1897). The patent is also printed
in J.J. Fahie, A History of Wireless Telegraphy, 1838-1899 (New
York, 1899), pp. 296-320.
74"Notes" (n. 45 above), p. 665. On FitzGerald's comment, see
FitzGerald to Lodge, October 30, 1897 (n. 53 above).
'Just after Marconi's patent was published, Electrician
published a series of articles on the coherer, including Lodge's
"History of the Coherer Principle" (n. 19 above).
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The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited 743
An element of nationalism deepened the frustration. Marconi was
an Italian. The "ether" had been discovered by great British
scientists like Faraday, Kelvin, and Maxwell. The Maxwellians were
their heirs, but they had lost the priority of the discovery of
electromagnetic waves to a German, Heinrich Hertz. Maxwell's
electromagnetic wave was then named the Hertzian wave. Lodge tried
to change its name to the "Maxwellian wave" at Oxford, but he
failed as a result of the strong objection of another German
scientist, Ludwig Boltzmann.76 The possi- bility of a commercial
use of the ether was then opened by Marconi. This rendered Lodge
twice narrowly anticipated by foreigners in important discoveries.
Marconi's comprehensive patent worsened things. The immense use of
wireless telegraphy during wartime and for naval ships seemed
obvious. If Marconi's patent went unchallenged, it would monopolize
not only Hertzian waves but also important British national
interests. It was thus no accident that, after Marconi's patent,
many British scientists and engineers such as J. J. Thomson,
Minchin, Rollo Appleyard, and Campbell Swinton joined with Lodge in
deprecat- ing Marconi's originality.77
As Thompson reported in 1899, "They were evidently purposely
drafted as widely as possible to cover all possible extensions to
telegra- phy, explosion of mines, and the like, which, indeed, were
talked about publicly in connection with Marconi from the first....
they are not patents for telegraphy, but for the transmission by
Hertz waves of signals or impulses of any kind. .... In this sense
beyond all question Lodge was using Hertz waves for a wireless
'telegraph' in 1894."78 For Lodge and Thompson, it was Marconi,
with his marvelously broad claims, who first violated "the rules of
the game." Thus, there was no need for them to follow the
rules.
Constructing Lodge's Priority Now let us examine Aitken's first
source, an article in the Electrician
entitled "Dr. Oliver Lodge's Apparatus for Wireless Telegraphy."
The article was intentionally published side by side with Marconi's
patent as the "best antidote of Marconism.""79 Aitken apparently
thought that the article could support the claim of Lodge's
telegraphy in 1894. But there was in fact no mention of Lodge's
telegraphic trial. What the article said
76For this episode, see "The British Association," London Times,
August 15, 1894; Lodge, Advancing Science (n. 31 above), pp.
162-63. Even after this, Lodge often used the term "Maxwellian
wave"; see, e.g., his "History of the Coherer Principle," p.
89.
"Pocock (n. 5 above), pp. 103-5. 7Silvanus P. Thompson, "Report
of Wireless Telegraph Patents" (1900), in ADM. 116.
570, Public Record Office, p. 38. ""Notes" (n. 45 above), p.
665.
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744 Sungook Hong was that "Lodge described and exhibited
publicly in operation a combination of sending and receiving
apparatus constituting a system of telegraphy substantially the
same as that now claimed in" Marconi's patent, and that "Dr. Lodge
published enough three years ago to enable the most simple-minded
'practician' to compound a system of practical telegraphy."" These
two strategies are exactly the same as Lodge's two strategies,
namely, identifying the principles of his experiments in 1894 with
those in Marconi's wireless telegraphy and stressing the possible
influence of Lodge on Marconi.
After 1898, the "Maxwell-Hertz-Marconi" genealogy in wireless
teleg- raphy was firmly established. More so, Lodge and Thompson
tried all possible ways of refuting Marconi. In order to weaken
Marconi's patent, they advertised that, due to the wires ("base
lines," as Thompson called them), "there is no such thing as
wireless telegraphy." They publicized other scientists' success,
particularly Adolf Slaby's success in Germany.8" But, most
important for our discussions, Lodge's 1894 experiments began to be
interpreted as telegraphic in nature. Thompson for the first time
forged the claim that "on several occasions, and notably at Oxford
in 1894, he showed how such coherers could be used in transmitting
telegraphic signals to a distance. He showed that they would work
through solid walls. Lodge's great distance at that time had not
exceeded some 100 or 150 yards. Communication was thus made between
the University Museum and the adjacent building of the Clarendon
Laboratory""82 (emphasis added). It marked the beginning of the
long story of Lodge's telegraphy in 1894.
Thompson's "telegraphic interpretation" of Lodge's 1894 experi-
ments did not appear in Lodge's own writings. In 1900, Lodge
admitted that "the writer [Lodge] himself did not pursue the matter
into tele- graphic application, because he was unaware that there
would be any demand for this kind of telegraph.""3 In the third
edition of his Signalling thmugh Space without Wires (1900), which
Fleming even criti- cized as "a perversion of fact,"84 Lodge's
recollection was essentially the same, saying that "so far as the
present author was concerned he did not realise that there would be
any particular advantage in thus with difficulty telegraphing
across space.... In this non-perception of the practical uses of
wireless telegraphy he undoubtedly erred."85
80"Dr. Oliver Lodge's Apparatus for Wireless Telegraphy" (n. 9
above). 8"Thompson, "Telegraphy Across Space" (n. 40 above); "Dr.
Lodge on Wireless
Telegraphy," Electrical Review 42 (1898): 103-4. 8"Thompson,
"Telegraphy Across Space," p. 458. "Lodge, "Report to the Chief
Engineer of the Government Telegraphs" (n. 64 above). 'MJohn
Ambrose Fleming to Guglielmo Marconi, January 12, 1900, Marconi
Company
Archives, Chelmsford. 'Lodge, Signalling thmugh Space without
Wires (n. 21 above), p. 45.
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