overhead telegraph wires, and communication with London was cut. It was characteristic of Marconi’s opportunism and instinct for publicity that he arranged for the newly opened station at the Madeira Hotel to send wireless messages to the Royal Needles Hotel, from where they could be forwarded to London by the telegraph links from the Isle of Wight, which were still open. In the event, Gladstone recovered sufficiently to return to his home, where he died in May 1898.
Marconi fell out with the management of the Madeira Hotel - it is not clear if the dispute was about money or the nuisance his wireless station caused to other guests - and moved his station to a house in Bournemouth, and then finally to the Haven Hotel, a former coaching inn in the adjoining resort of Poole. This became a home from home for him for many years, long after the station at the Royal Needles Hotel was closed down. After a day in which the Haven’s guests were entertained by the crackling of Marconi’s aerial, the inventor would often sit down at the piano after supper. Accompanied by his brother Alfonso on the violin and an engineer, Dr Erskine Murray, on cello, the trio would play popular classical pieces as the prevailing south-west wind rattled the hotel windows. Annie Marconi often stayed to look after her son, and those evenings in Poole were among the most delicious and poignant of her life. She was to see Guglielmo less and less as he pursued
with steely determination his ambition to transmit wireless signals further and further across the sea. For the time being, however, the fame he had already achieved was a vindication of her faith in him, and indeed of the great risks she had taken in her own life.
7
Texting Queen Victoria
O n 8 August 1898 the airwaves crackled with one of the first text messages in history: ‘Very anxious to have cricket match between Crescent and Royal Yachts Officers. Please ask the Queen whether she would allow match to be played at Osborne. Crescent goes to Portsmouth, Monday.’ It was sent from the royal yacht Osborne , off the Isle of Wight, to a small receiving station set up in a cottage in the grounds of Osborne House. Queen Victoria’s reply was tapped back across the sea: ‘The Queen approves of the match between the Crescent and Royal Yachts Officers being played at Osborne.’
The Queen, then seventy-nine years old, had spent much of the summer at Osborne, and could not fail to notice that something intriguing was going on a few miles to the south at the Royal Needles Hotel. Guglielmo Marconi was not only becoming something of a local figure, he had won tremendous acclaim in the press for one of the first commercial tests of his wireless telegraphy, when the Dublin Daily Express had asked him if he could cover the Kingston Regatta in Dublin Bay that July. The newspaper had been impressed by some experiments one of Marconi’s engineers had carried out on a treacherous part of the Irish coast for the shipping underwriters Lloyd’s of London. To cover the Kingston Regatta Marconi fitted up a tug, the Flying Huntress , with his equipment, and followed the yacht races at sea, sending back the
latest news and positions to a receiving station on shore which then cabled the up-to-the-minute accounts to the Express ’s sister paper, the Evening Mail .
The Flying Huntress was an old puffer, and looked comical with its makeshift aerial mast and a roll of wire rabbit-netting rigged up to exchange signals with the shore station in the gardens of the Kingston habourmaster’s home. In contrast to the bizarre sight of ‘Marconi’s magic netting hanging from an impromptu mast’, the Dublin Daily Express reporter found the inventor himself captivating.
A tall, athletic figure, dark hair, steady grey blue eyes, a resolute mouth and an open forehead - such is the young Italian inventor. His manner is at once unassuming to a degree, and yet confident. He speaks freely and fully, and quite frankly defines
Marconi fell out with the management of the Madeira Hotel - it is not clear if the dispute was about money or the nuisance his wireless station caused to other guests - and moved his station to a house in Bournemouth, and then finally to the Haven Hotel, a former coaching inn in the adjoining resort of Poole. This became a home from home for him for many years, long after the station at the Royal Needles Hotel was closed down. After a day in which the Haven’s guests were entertained by the crackling of Marconi’s aerial, the inventor would often sit down at the piano after supper. Accompanied by his brother Alfonso on the violin and an engineer, Dr Erskine Murray, on cello, the trio would play popular classical pieces as the prevailing south-west wind rattled the hotel windows. Annie Marconi often stayed to look after her son, and those evenings in Poole were among the most delicious and poignant of her life. She was to see Guglielmo less and less as he pursued
with steely determination his ambition to transmit wireless signals further and further across the sea. For the time being, however, the fame he had already achieved was a vindication of her faith in him, and indeed of the great risks she had taken in her own life.
7
Texting Queen Victoria
O n 8 August 1898 the airwaves crackled with one of the first text messages in history: ‘Very anxious to have cricket match between Crescent and Royal Yachts Officers. Please ask the Queen whether she would allow match to be played at Osborne. Crescent goes to Portsmouth, Monday.’ It was sent from the royal yacht Osborne , off the Isle of Wight, to a small receiving station set up in a cottage in the grounds of Osborne House. Queen Victoria’s reply was tapped back across the sea: ‘The Queen approves of the match between the Crescent and Royal Yachts Officers being played at Osborne.’
The Queen, then seventy-nine years old, had spent much of the summer at Osborne, and could not fail to notice that something intriguing was going on a few miles to the south at the Royal Needles Hotel. Guglielmo Marconi was not only becoming something of a local figure, he had won tremendous acclaim in the press for one of the first commercial tests of his wireless telegraphy, when the Dublin Daily Express had asked him if he could cover the Kingston Regatta in Dublin Bay that July. The newspaper had been impressed by some experiments one of Marconi’s engineers had carried out on a treacherous part of the Irish coast for the shipping underwriters Lloyd’s of London. To cover the Kingston Regatta Marconi fitted up a tug, the Flying Huntress , with his equipment, and followed the yacht races at sea, sending back the
latest news and positions to a receiving station on shore which then cabled the up-to-the-minute accounts to the Express ’s sister paper, the Evening Mail .
The Flying Huntress was an old puffer, and looked comical with its makeshift aerial mast and a roll of wire rabbit-netting rigged up to exchange signals with the shore station in the gardens of the Kingston habourmaster’s home. In contrast to the bizarre sight of ‘Marconi’s magic netting hanging from an impromptu mast’, the Dublin Daily Express reporter found the inventor himself captivating.
A tall, athletic figure, dark hair, steady grey blue eyes, a resolute mouth and an open forehead - such is the young Italian inventor. His manner is at once unassuming to a degree, and yet confident. He speaks freely and fully, and quite frankly defines
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