Well. Welcome, everybody. Thank you very much for coming to the Portland's Western Library for Special Collections.
We're going to hear a talk from the Burn Bussey Marconi fellow, and.
[INAUDIBLE] be introduced in a moment.
And first, I'm here, Alexandra Franklin, to say that Ana has been with us over in the past year as a visiting fellow,
as part of the Visiting Fellows program.
The Visiting Fellows Program, which you may know about, invites scholars from outside of Oxford to come and spend a few months at the library.
And one of the really wonderful opportunities we have is for a fellow in the history of science,
technology and communications that's connected with, as the name implies,
the fact that the Bodleian holds the Bodleian and the History of Science Museum hold
the archive and collections of the Marconi Company that came to the Plain in 2005.
And it was through the great good offices of the late Gordon Bussey,
whom I believe and that knew that that the archive came here and also that funds were provided for the visiting fellowships.
There are 2 to 4 fellows each year. You can see it as a topic that interests you.
A video of a former fellow, Alex Taylor, on the Bodleian YouTube site discussing his research into solar weather.
As as this was played out in the the Marconi records, we are making another call for fellows.
So please do reach out to your colleagues who are, as I say, outside of the University of Oxford before the 2nd of December.
If there are people, if they're scholars who would like to come and use the fall dance collections for the history of science,
technology and communications. I'm the last of the introductions.
Don't worry. So it's it's my very great pleasure to be introducing Dr. Anna Ganymede, but also to say a big thank you to the Bodleian and to Alex,
because it's been a really lovely opportunity to work with them and to have one of the fellows featured here
and and to have a joint seminar with the Bodleian and with the Oxford Centre for the History of Science,
Medicine and Technology.
I'm sure many of you, if you work on the modern history of science and technology, will have come across some of Anna's many works.
She's worked, especially on the history of technology, but also on training,
on the commercialisation and commercial activity of professors as it pertains to science and to the professors of engineering.
She, for example, is on the editorial board of the journal The History of Technology.
And she, of course, also is the editor with Robert Fox of Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe 1852 1939.
So it's really lovely that and I was able to come even after having to postpone a bit during
COVID to come here and to be a Bernd Bassi Marconi visiting fellow at the Baldwin Library.
And I was very pleased to hear that she knows both Byrne and Bussey.
So these are real people while she was doing her research here on the Marconi archive and so she's into now.
So I believe for her talk today, she's actually going to be drawing on some of the research that she used during her time in Oxford.
So and thank you very much for speaking today. Thank you. Thank.
And thank you to everybody for coming here to listen to in the hidden side of the story of Marconi.
But first of all, allow me to start with the A.
To all the people who made it possible for Vishakha to come here.
First of all, those who prompted the move from Chelmsford and then for the really fantastic work that was done
here by the librarians and the artists in making available this fantastic trove of documents.
Now is not a rhetorical way of standing, because I do believe that by making this occasion available,
the encouragement has been given to researchers working on as to expanding the horizon perspective,
not only on a coding sense, but also on the context in which we can developed.
And extend the view to the socio economic and political aspects of this study, which I do recommend as a field for research,
because really I find this archive as a sort of the golden mine in that respect.
Now my view, my work has been based on some of the same more marginal sides of the story of why of this.
I began by studying the Marconi's patents on which there was not much known at the time.
When I put my hands and when I began my work, I would like to remember that the archive was still kept in channels.
And believe me, if you have not worked in chunks or chunks of time,
you know the difference between working in winter in Italy and heat and place where it was.
You had to work with gloves and hat in the hemisphere in this wonderful setting now.
But it wasn't very nice anyway. So now I'm still working on a sort of modern aspect of the story of the Marconi Marconi Wireless Company,
and that is the leading side of the story of the company, really more than on common sense, on the company,
on the people who were in the company and the people who supported the company, the board of directors,
the shareholders will accept that they take part in what we thought was really a crazy idea of wireless telegraphy.
And so, first of all, perhaps I should remind those who are not really familiar with Marconi overcoming what and what is the legacy,
the beginning of the old story.
Now, Marconi arrived in London in 1896 when this famous black box with the proposal for a system of communication that could do without wireless,
but using the electromagnetic waves and where had been just discovered a few years before that a gentleman physicist I think it it's
one year after his arrival in 1890 7.8 look at patents for his invention and immediately after the company was set up in London.
Only four years after, in 1901, the first transatlantic transmission mission was achieved.
That was a fantastic and extraordinary trajectory from not a totally unprecedented system of communication to something that could go beyond for one,
short, short of the Atlantic.
Now much has been written on the technical side of this story.
But very little has been written, in my view, on the company side of the story.
How was it possible for a totally unprecedented technology and for the company that was investing
in a totally unnoticed invented idea to survive the first initial phase of its development?
When no money was coming from Caesar because the first slaves were obtained in 1901.
The costs of these experiments were very high. So what is interesting for me is precisely this first period of experimentation,
of attempts to establish the credibility and the benefit of the system with the backing of a company, the of the company.
It looks as if all the stories of Marconi tend to focus on himself as if he was not only the technological driver,
but also the entrepreneurial driver. As he formed, the decisions about the strategy of the company were made by himself.
The company said the fades need to change.
It's not their name that is constantly repeated is the name of bitcoin and very little about.
We are the people we are working within. But. Was he really alone at the time of this enterprise?
Who are the people we're backing? Not only the technical staff or the technical staff we know about enough when shopping.
I think we like to know more about that as well. But on the company side, you know, very, very little.
So what I've been trying to do in my work has been precisely to look at the hidden side of the story.
How he managed to find not only financial support, but also legitimisation of loyalist enterprise and where the people were backing him.
How would the invading force the year before?
This is a period in which the company underwent not only big, important technological changes, progress,
but it's also a period in which in which the company made profound changes in its trajectory, in its business strategy.
As a result of the developments that were taking place and the reaction of the potential customers of the system.
So how did the these changes in the strategy of the company took place and what
is the profit profile of both the board of directors and the shareholders?
Now, my argument is that by unveiling this hidden structure behind the company,
it is possible also to understand better the visible side of the story of the Marconi Company.
And that's what I'm trying to do. Now.
These are mining gold mines, which I've been using for my research.
First of all, some of the documents are kept here. Yes, there are documents in the full size regarding the approval of the company.
But I found that very, very important.
The minutes of the board of directors and the company reports all 3 minutes.
And we don't have the degree to copy the official version.
But fortunately here in the archive, the means and they have been very fundamental for me for understanding what was going on.
It's the board level.
The other gold mine, where the summaries of capital and shares that all the companies had to deposit in London in what was called the Companies House,
now they are in the national accounting. Now, I selected these two years, 19, 1897,
the at the end of the very first year of activity of the company and the night at the end the summary was issued at the beginning of 1901.
1901 was the year when the first transatlantic experiment was carried out.
So it's the year before. What I wanted to understand is where the people were working there and what was going on behind the scenes.
Now, what's the cut?
In summary, go leave as information is not much.
They gave the name, the address, the occupation.
And that's it. And the occupation sometime is very generic because gentle man doesn't mean much.
So what it did was to compliment that kind of information using other sources, especially the census, the 1901 census, just 1901 onwards.
Then you have time for it for me anyway. And that gives much more information about age sex.
So the need in the state was a source of income and family relations,
and that was really important for me to understand that we had we shall not happy to do that.
I also try to extend it. I think information and it is fantastic, so much information about people you can get from from from Internet now.
And the competition was idea from that and nothing.
So in other important preliminary point when Marconi.
Just very, very briefly. I hope not. But not many Marconi people are experts here, because I have to be very brief.
When Marconi arriving in London in 1897, he did not want to set up a company.
His idea was to get a patent so it immediately for most obtain licenses.
The royalties go back to Italy and set the down as a professional inventor.
That was his plan and the plan for which he had support from his family.
The idea of setting up a company came in London and it did not come from Marconi himself.
The mastermind and the instigator of the company was his cousin, Henry Jamison.
DAVIES Now, and in that, it was a mining engineer.
From I mean being a family of of five now calling the merchants.
Um, and he was, well, he worked for companies in London.
As an expert in a milling machinery.
And then then we set them down in 1882 as a consulting engineer, again in London and again specialising in the field of meaning machinery.
Now, he was a. It's always important.
He was in a pattern of patterns.
And so therefore, when Marconi arrived in London,
he was the ideal person to get in touch in order to get some assistance and some idea of how to get the value.
Boston in England and he. DAVIES who suggested to create a company not only suggested the idea he only
managed to get support from within his network of cold merchants in London.
He was operating both in London and in that business.
And I mean genius. And very soon he had. Connections, very extended connections.
Incidentally, the idea of setting up the company was not at all well received by Marco and his family.
They were strongly against it. So it was quite an upheaval.
The struggle between Mckone and Davis and the family,
to convince them that there was something in that idea or in that part in that could really transform themselves in commercially important.
Now the baby is mentioned sometime in the.
Not a thesis about the historical and but then again,
it's a name that comes in the beginning and then there's a few years and nobody knows what's going on with a still there.
And if he's still there, what he's doing. Now, just to give you an idea of the climate in which this company was floated,
this is a comment that was established only a few days after the creation of the company,
but one of the most important donors that can contribute something, the electrician,
so long as the company remains in its present pupa stage of development, its scene of usefulness must be obviously an exceedingly limited one.
But of course it may develop into something different in which even the original stakeholders by enabling God.
But then these off chances are more to the case of speculators than investors any more.
So that way. Now he was right for many reasons that were shared by other important people.
First of all, why wireless telegraphy?
When there was telegraphy that was working perfectly well it master if ever it was make the work.
Wireless telegraphy could be useful of all in those cases where cables could not be laid.
We have such cases, for example, for communication between sure and cheap in general, between stations and other stations that we are in movement.
But was it really possible to transform it into a feasible technology?
The scientific community was definitely against it in the sense that, yes, it was.
First of all, Marconi's idea. Marconi's part that was not regarded as really safe in the sense that according to the scientific community,
Marconi was using the ideas and the tools that had already been used by experimental physicists for their own for their own research.
So there were four possibilities of litigation. But more important than that.
The problem was that while telegraphy had intrinsic according to physicists,
limits and out electromagnetic waves move in straight lines, they go all around the earth.
So there was a limit. The the the the optical horizon, the young, which, uh, electromagnetic waves could not travel.
So that was already a limitation. And then the other limitation, even bigger in the eyes of the British community, how could a an experienced.
Scientifically not prepare. Young inventor, develop this idea.
This could only be achieved by someone who knew better about electricity and physics.
Uh, so. This is to give you an idea of how risky and crazy, really important to be of telegraphy and the sun.
So all where the people who decided to invest in this company.
Now, this is the name of the first event, the subscribers of the company.
As you can see, they are all coal factories and coal merchants, most of them operating in London, although not all of them were English.
A brief example. He was Irish when it was Irish.
But nothing was off. But they were all part of the network of convergence based in London, in the Corn Exchange in London.
Not all of them became members of the board of directors.
Here are the names of those who did become members of the board of directors.
They were really especially the artist behind it. So if you can say that was one of the most important firms of all merchants operating in Britain.
Not only one. No. She was very quickly about some of these people.
Especially those who became very important for the development of the company.
First of all, William Smith them. They were he and his brother, the senior partner.
So a very, very big meal in Lancaster in about and minutes.
One of the most important meetings in that part of the country,
one of the most advanced technological they were the first to use the main use the first to use electricity for lighting,
the first to install sprinklers for fire prevention.
So very much technologically advanced. They were all really representative of the top of the category.
But let me say something more about the three of them.
James Bannatyne. Yeah.
I don't have a picture of him, unfortunately, but I have a picture of where he was living.
Now, he was from a family of males in Limerick in Ireland, very prosperous company.
But he decided he was not interested in the business.
He decided to withdraw and send me this referral to someone else and will retire to this beautiful
mansion in Exeter where Marconi was often invited and he likely would match his mother as well.
Appreciated the invitation and he bannatyne remained for the rest of the story of the continent.
The First World War, really one of the cornerstones of the company,
was always by the side of Marconi in all his decisions and putting money into it as we shall see the other people who are important for now hostility,
the good bobbies. Again, this is a very interesting family, by the way.
That is a book that has been published recently on the group Bodies.
It's here in the library. And it's a it's the story of this family of Quakers who settled down in Ireland at the beginning of the 18th century,
really, and developed a very big business. Their business was mainly tobacco at UTA, and only later they moved into corn milling.
When they bought Valentines Factory.
But they they also developed into stockbroking. I mean, good.
Well, these are still one of the big stock brokers in London now.
And they also develop partnerships abroad.
They had a stock broking agency in New York. And so we should see that important.
And here it is, the first man who became one of the members of the board of directors.
Among many friends is Goodbody, a champion, tennis champion and football champion, by the way,
played the important tournaments in Britain, Scotland, and he was one of the members of the board of directors in the game.
The good qualities will remain for all our story and what absolutely critical more staunch supporters of Marconi and these the wireless project.
Uh, no. The other side of this story.
The shutters should go against the shoulders of the company was issued that it was a medium sized company and in
the thousand shares the number of the shadows this is is legal says this show is small and is not only 99 people.
And now here you have the number of shares that were taken at the end of December.
And you will see, well, it is clear the Marconi and they held the majority of the shares because they received them in payment for their innovation.
I mean, Marconi received them as payment of his invention,
but yet there was money that was we went into it and it came from Irish and English shareholders in more or less even number.
Only few Scottish shareholders.
So this is the picture of based on the addresses of the shareholders and you can see that the number is more or less half and half.
At that stage, the majority of the votes, if you look, consider both the English and the Irish.
About 60% of them we are call related, the people, people who had an interest or some connection with coal.
So if by chance you don't have a question to ask and you ask me why politicians should not use the very interesting question,
but I don't want to deal with it now.
Now, at the beginning, the idea of the shareholders and the board of directors was more or less the same as what Marconi had in mind.
Get the invention working for a short, medium distance.
Shall it quickly make money and deal with it?
That's it. I mean, not. Not to nothing. It was already crazy to have this idea of a wireless telegraphy system that was working and selling.
But let's not go beyond that. It was a sort of realistic approach to the new technology, and it was shared by all the members of the board.
Probably means that months went by in 1878.
Sorry, 1897, but nothing was really coming out of this invention.
In commercial films, Marconi was making progress.
He was arranging demonstrations, especially in the South.
So seeing a lot of the stations, which were also laboratories in a way,
and there were also shop windows for all of our clients within potential customers to come and see the system at work.
But they were also there always sort of sniffing around, but nothing was coming in terms of any concrete proposal for purchase.
There were negotiations important with the General Post Office.
With the Army and the Navy were interested both for the possibility of communicating between ships in navigation.
They were also thwarting agencies interest in both public and private governments navigation companies.
But nothing was coming off. In fact, the most important of the negotiations with the General Post Office was proving very, very complex.
The post office was really trying hard to sort of contain the development of the
company and find a way of getting hold of the idea of the into without being too much.
So there were and they stole they were not they were not moving at that point in 1898 or 80, 90.
Yes. They were already beginning within the company and among the board of the members of the directors to host to begin to
emerge some disappointment with what was going on and some perplexity about the direction that things were taking.
They wanted they insistent in trying to complete at least some of the agreements, some of these things and proceed.
So there was clearly some dissent emerging within the company despite despite the fact that the company,
Marconi, was making progress, especially on the distance of communication.
They still had some problems with the problem with the interference between the stations
community for the permitting and then and sort of overlapping one with the Arab with the other.
Let's hope the feeling was beginning to emerge within the company, that they were reaching a point when a decision had to be made.
And the decision was between two alternatives,
either to go for the wide path of accepting the challenge of longer distance communication, and that meant moving in that direction,
especially of Madina communication as a way of dealing also with one of the
main problems emerging from the and post office and the post office medically,
among other things, that no communication system was feasible in Britain, within Britain or between from the coast of Britain.
They had to be called controlled by the general post offices.
So the only time the. Of commercial proposition.
Then the company was left with laws to provide not sale of apparatus, but service.
In other words, the system was what was to remain in the hands of the company,
and they were providing not only operators, but also the operators for people who wanted to use the system.
That was the only way out from the restrictions imposed by Virginia Post Office,
but that was a good idea only if it was possible to move on the long distance.
But in order to do so, of course, the problem was to rise to the stake and accept the fact that the company had to go on with demonstrations,
with tests, with experiments, and they were going to be very expensive.
So from where the money come? So the decision was made in October at the end of October, of increasing the capital in order to get more money.
And the reason that was explained was because of the expenses.
In order to pursue that line of long distance, we are going to need to be much greater than in the past.
No new stations to experiment, the stations that could be set up a systems had to be paid and grow in at ease at that point.
Some of the members of the board resigned.
Uh. And it was at that point that Marconi and they decided to bring in more Irish people.
And the Irish people, all they brought in is the most important.
What was William Goodbody?
He was a stockbroker in Dublin, but he also had connections, as they say, in New York,
with these cousin Robert new good buddies that I really think can be found by tens.
It's a huge family. And to navigate, we'd be good buddies.
So a. Now this is the change that takes place in the company as a result of these decision to change strategy.
The English call called Merchants Disappear.
What we mean is already the Irish partners, the head directors.
The only addition is of a managing director instead of Germany.
So maybe some was not a professional and they decided to hire a professional manager.
Now, my question is how does this change in the board of the direction?
I leave to reflect or not in the composition of the shareholders.
It does. Now the company, after the recapitalisation at the end of 91, the number of shareholders has gone up to eight and with 11.
And this is the new distribution of the shareholders.
They are all Irish. Most of them.
I divide the little corners to these dark green eyes those who live in Dublin and the rest is living in other parts of Ireland.
Same for the Reds. The landowner is the orange and the really small small thing.
So what it shows is that the response to the change in terms of the trajectory on taking even more risks of accepting really annoying.
Probably seen kind of a challenge where Irish people.
Now, if you want to see the more in detail, the number of shares, you can see that the Marconi shares went down.
That's compared to the number of the shares that we have sold to other people, purchased by other people.
But the number of the Irish shareholders is even greater than the number of the geographical distribution.
What is also important among the I and share resources where I've been able to identify where are family groups and they are very important.
Because among them, the good bodies, the Bannatyne Fergusson was the manager of the Bannatyne model,
which was now controlled by the good bodies monies.
The only people who are not called emergency on the bikes and they were shepherd builders.
But this is related to people, merchants.
So this they were really very important not only as individuals, but as groups, as families, very sort of diffuse families.
And here is another interesting I don't know. I'm not an expert in these kind of things.
I try to think of ways in which this kind of data can be visualised.
But I find that interesting because it shows well, at the top you see those who have the shares from 800 onwards from Richard Body on
the others are all mainly Irish shareholders who decided to invest little money.
There were people who were investing £10.
Lots of them were investing and the funds. But really it's not big money and it is not big money.
Because here are some of the. Big groups have managed to identify among the shadow nut no longer a prominent position of the coal merchants.
They are also other groups that emerged as important stockbrokers.
Solicitors, barristers. Backlogs.
Clergy, many of them women, lot with widowers, shopkeepers,
really small investors who clearly we are not scared by the idea of a technology that was not going to make it.
Now. How easy? This is the big question for me.
Why the Irish people? Marconi was demonstrated.
This exhibition in London is where people crowded.
Every time he gave lectures in London and cheered.
And when I enthusiastic about the invasion. But they did not put the money in the market.
Indeed organise exhibitions, demonstrations also in Ireland they did.
I mean the king sold. We got the for example was a big, big exhibition.
I had a very successful one. People were they to see it.
They were lining up on the on the on the sure not to see the only the the Yorks competing, but also to see that they were communicating.
A very important demonstration was given for for Lloyds again in Northern Ireland.
Again, very successful, very publicised. Sorry.
So computing, I am still thinking about it because to me they are still about those questions that remain open,
why they are, how they need to be, this message get through.
My impression is that it was very much sort of driven the trust in the invention by these big family groups.
They were very prominent in Irish life.
People knew about them and people thought that if they believed in the invasion, there must have been something good.
So there must have been a way of communicating.
I can see by the addresses almost across the street you can see the line of thrusts that are emanating from these families.
Certainly important was the role of the stock brokers, the Irish stock brokers of which,
as they are shown there were meaning they were probably they were themselves shareholders.
I imagine they were very important for convincing people to put some money.
But I still have to find the way in which this mechanism works.
I This is the part of work that remains to be done and for which I suppose I have to go to Dublin sooner or later.
So I am not able to give you a definite answer for this extraordinary the pre-eminence of Irish people as members of the shadow community.
And to finish.
The other big question remains what happens when after 1992, one after the first transatlantic transmission, Marconi's company takes another big jolt,
especially in the Marine section of the company, the one I was dealing with, the service providing service for commercial agencies.
At that point, what I know is another kind of financial support will be seen and that they are big banks, not English.
Belgian. And that is where the seven things I don't understand.
They were coal merchants, diamonds.
And this major connection. I still have to find out exactly what it means.
But the money that comes in order to support the extraordinary new development.
Because that just. Just a.
Communication was done using batteries. Normal traditional batteries up to 1890, 98.
Still they were using batteries.
So then all with steam engines dynamos no more of the poles that were used for the first transmissions, all pipes, but huge systems of antennas.
They were towers, huge towers themselves.
We have technological, big technological innovations.
So it's a completely new level of enterprise.
And so that level of enterprise is a save. Money comes from somewhere else.
We have the did the initiative show this remain?
I don't know. That's the next stage of my research. But for the time being, we stop here.
Thank you.