Signor Marconi’s Magic Box: The invention that sparked the radio revolution. Gavin Weightman

cousin of the magazine’s founder, was also aboard, and he no doubt introduced Josephine to Marconi. By the time the St Paul was approaching the west coast of Ireland they were engaged. Neither of them was sure how their families would react to the news. Marconi’s fame did not necessarily mark him out as a fine ‘catch’ as far as the parents of marriageable young ladies were concerned. Despite his aristocratic associations through his mother’s family, he was fatally Italian, and therefore ‘foreign’; and his fortune was by no means assured. The wireless business, many reasoned, might turn out to be just a passing fad. And Marconi’s own family might not be keen for him to marry at such an uncertain time in his career, especially to an American woman they had never met. Josephine and Guglielmo decided to keep their engagement secret for the time being.

      There was no certainty about when the St Paul would enter the English Channel, or when it would be within wireless range of the Isle of Wight. The Marconi engineers waiting at the Royal Needles Hotel were therefore on tenterhooks. In the same way that fishermen attach a bell to their line so that they will know if a fish is biting even if they have dozed off, the engineers had rigged up a system whereby a bell would wake them if their receiver was called up at night. Henry Jameson-Davis and Major Flood Page, the managing director of Marconi’s company, were at the hotel awaiting the St Paul’s signal. In a letter to The Times Major Flood Page gave a vivid description of the excitement of the occasion:

      To make assurance doubly sure one of the assistants passed the night in the instrument room, but his night was not disturbed by the ringing of his bell, and we were all left to sleep in peace. Between six and seven a.m. I was down; everything was in order. The Needles resembled pillars of salt as one after the other they were lighted up by the brilliant sunrise. There was a thick haze over the sea, and it would have been possible for the liner to pass the Needles without our catching a sight of her. We chatted away pleasantly with the Haven [the station at the Haven Hotel, in Poole], Breakfast over, the sun was delicious as we paced on the lawn, but at sea the haze increased to fog; no ordinary signals could have been read from any ship passing the place at which we were.

      The idea of failure never entered our minds. So far as we were concerned, we were ready, and we felt complete confidence that the ship would be all right with Mr Marconi himself on board. Yet, as may easily be imagined, we felt in a state of nervous tension. Waiting is ever tedious, but to wait for hours for the first liner that has ever approached these or any other shores with Marconi apparatus on board, and to wait from ten to eleven, when the steamer was expected, onto twelve, to one to two – it was not anxiety, it was certainly not doubt, not lack of confidence, but it was waiting. We sent our signals over and over again, when, in the most natural and ordinary way, our bell rang. It was 4.45 p.m. ‘Is that you St Paul?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Where are you?’ ‘Sixty-six nautical miles away.’ Need I confess that delight, joy, satisfaction swept away all nervous tension, and in a few minutes we were transcribing, as if it were our daily occupation, four cablegrams for New York, and many telegrams for many parts of England and France, which had been sent fifty, forty-five, forty miles by ‘wireless’ to be despatched from the Totland Bay Post Office.

      While the rustic Totland Bay post office was handling an unusually heavy load of telegraph messages, including one giving instructions for the menu at a forthcoming dinner party in London, on board the St Paul as it steamed towards Southampton there was a good deal of fun and games. The operator at the Royal Needles Hotel tapped out a few bits of news, including the latest from South Africa, where the British were engaged in an embarrassingly costly war with the Boers, who had besieged Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. With the permission of the ship’s commander, Captain Jamison, the on-board printers, accustomed to turning out menus and general notices, produced a small newssheet under the banner The Transatlantic Times,