Thunderstruck: Marconi's Wireless

Erik Larson “Thunderstruck: Marconi's Wireless” Random House, 2006, 392 pp.

If this had been this author’s first book, it likely would have been his last.  Although the history of Marconi and his development of radio technology is well-worth reading about, the companion story about a murderous, Dr. of homeopathy and his mistress is not.  The author tells the interwoven stories of two men—Dr. Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive, uneducated, creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication.  The only reason for the companion story involving the Dr. is the fact that Marconi’s wireless was able to fascinate the world as the Doctor and companion attempted to escape to the US while, unbeknownst to them,  the world was kept abreast of their location minute by minute.  The resulting publicity did more for Marconi’s invention than all previous efforts to get attention.

My Notes:

Pg. ix:  This is a work of nonfiction relying heavily on investigative reports from Scotland Yard and letters, memoirs and other written documents.

Pg. 46: In September 1895 Marconi performed an experiment of transmitting a signal about fifteen hundred yards to a receiver out of sight on the other side of a hill.  This was supposed to be impossible as electromagnetic waves travelled in a straight line.  (By 1901 he had increased the distance to only 186 miles; but, in 1909 he received the Nobel prize awarded for physics even though he was not a physicists or even a scientist of any kind.)’

Pg. 85:  On July 2, 1897, Marconi received his full, formal patent.

Pg. 116:  Marconi’s plans for transmitting radio waves flew in the face of all that physicists believed about the optical character of electromagnetic waves.  Like beams of light, waves traveled in a straight line.  The earth was curved.  Therefore, the physicists held, even if waves could travel thousands of miles, they would continue in a straight line far out into space.  Also, why bother?  How could wireless improve on the transoceanic telegraphy already in place via undersea cable?  In 1898 fourteen submarine cables draped the sea floor.