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Well. Welcome, everybody. Thank you very much for coming to the Portland's Western Library for Special Collections.

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We're going to hear a talk from the Burn Bussey Marconi fellow, and.

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[INAUDIBLE] be introduced in a moment.

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And first, I'm here, Alexandra Franklin, to say that Ana has been with us over in the past year as a visiting fellow,

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as part of the Visiting Fellows program.

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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.

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And one of the really wonderful opportunities we have is for a fellow in the history of science,

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technology and communications that's connected with, as the name implies,

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the fact that the Bodleian holds the Bodleian and the History of Science Museum hold

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the archive and collections of the Marconi Company that came to the Plain in 2005.

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And it was through the great good offices of the late Gordon Bussey,

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whom I believe and that knew that that the archive came here and also that funds were provided for the visiting fellowships.

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There are 2 to 4 fellows each year. You can see it as a topic that interests you.

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A video of a former fellow, Alex Taylor, on the Bodleian YouTube site discussing his research into solar weather.

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As as this was played out in the the Marconi records, we are making another call for fellows.

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So please do reach out to your colleagues who are, as I say, outside of the University of Oxford before the 2nd of December.

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If there are people, if they're scholars who would like to come and use the fall dance collections for the history of science,

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technology and communications. I'm the last of the introductions.

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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,

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because it's been a really lovely opportunity to work with them and to have one of the fellows featured here

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and and to have a joint seminar with the Bodleian and with the Oxford Centre for the History of Science,

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Medicine and Technology.

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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.

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She's worked, especially on the history of technology, but also on training,

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on the commercialisation and commercial activity of professors as it pertains to science and to the professors of engineering.

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She, for example, is on the editorial board of the journal The History of Technology.

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And she, of course, also is the editor with Robert Fox of Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe 1852 1939.

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So it's really lovely that and I was able to come even after having to postpone a bit during

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COVID to come here and to be a Bernd Bassi Marconi visiting fellow at the Baldwin Library.

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And I was very pleased to hear that she knows both Byrne and Bussey.

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So these are real people while she was doing her research here on the Marconi archive and so she's into now.

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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.

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So and thank you very much for speaking today. Thank you. Thank.

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And thank you to everybody for coming here to listen to in the hidden side of the story of Marconi.

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But first of all, allow me to start with the A.

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To all the people who made it possible for Vishakha to come here.

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First of all, those who prompted the move from Chelmsford and then for the really fantastic work that was done

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here by the librarians and the artists in making available this fantastic trove of documents.

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Now is not a rhetorical way of standing, because I do believe that by making this occasion available,

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the encouragement has been given to researchers working on as to expanding the horizon perspective,

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not only on a coding sense, but also on the context in which we can developed.

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And extend the view to the socio economic and political aspects of this study, which I do recommend as a field for research,

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because really I find this archive as a sort of the golden mine in that respect.

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Now my view, my work has been based on some of the same more marginal sides of the story of why of this.

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I began by studying the Marconi's patents on which there was not much known at the time.

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When I put my hands and when I began my work, I would like to remember that the archive was still kept in channels.

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And believe me, if you have not worked in chunks or chunks of time,

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you know the difference between working in winter in Italy and heat and place where it was.

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You had to work with gloves and hat in the hemisphere in this wonderful setting now.

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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,

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and that is the leading side of the story of the company, really more than on common sense, on the company,

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on the people who were in the company and the people who supported the company, the board of directors,

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the shareholders will accept that they take part in what we thought was really a crazy idea of wireless telegraphy.

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And so, first of all, perhaps I should remind those who are not really familiar with Marconi overcoming what and what is the legacy,

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the beginning of the old story.

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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,

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but using the electromagnetic waves and where had been just discovered a few years before that a gentleman physicist I think it it's

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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.

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Only four years after, in 1901, the first transatlantic transmission mission was achieved.

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That was a fantastic and extraordinary trajectory from not a totally unprecedented system of communication to something that could go beyond for one,

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short, short of the Atlantic.

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Now much has been written on the technical side of this story.

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But very little has been written, in my view, on the company side of the story.

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How was it possible for a totally unprecedented technology and for the company that was investing

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in a totally unnoticed invented idea to survive the first initial phase of its development?

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When no money was coming from Caesar because the first slaves were obtained in 1901.

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The costs of these experiments were very high. So what is interesting for me is precisely this first period of experimentation,

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of attempts to establish the credibility and the benefit of the system with the backing of a company, the of the company.

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It looks as if all the stories of Marconi tend to focus on himself as if he was not only the technological driver,

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but also the entrepreneurial driver. As he formed, the decisions about the strategy of the company were made by himself.

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The company said the fades need to change.

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It's not their name that is constantly repeated is the name of bitcoin and very little about.

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We are the people we are working within. But. Was he really alone at the time of this enterprise?

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Who are the people we're backing? Not only the technical staff or the technical staff we know about enough when shopping.

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I think we like to know more about that as well. But on the company side, you know, very, very little.

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So what I've been trying to do in my work has been precisely to look at the hidden side of the story.

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How he managed to find not only financial support, but also legitimisation of loyalist enterprise and where the people were backing him.

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How would the invading force the year before?

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This is a period in which the company underwent not only big, important technological changes, progress,

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but it's also a period in which in which the company made profound changes in its trajectory, in its business strategy.

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As a result of the developments that were taking place and the reaction of the potential customers of the system.

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So how did the these changes in the strategy of the company took place and what

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is the profit profile of both the board of directors and the shareholders?

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Now, my argument is that by unveiling this hidden structure behind the company,

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it is possible also to understand better the visible side of the story of the Marconi Company.

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And that's what I'm trying to do. Now.

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These are mining gold mines, which I've been using for my research.

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First of all, some of the documents are kept here. Yes, there are documents in the full size regarding the approval of the company.

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But I found that very, very important.

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The minutes of the board of directors and the company reports all 3 minutes.

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And we don't have the degree to copy the official version.

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But fortunately here in the archive, the means and they have been very fundamental for me for understanding what was going on.

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It's the board level.

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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,

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now they are in the national accounting. Now, I selected these two years, 19, 1897,

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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.

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1901 was the year when the first transatlantic experiment was carried out.

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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.

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Now, what's the cut?

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In summary, go leave as information is not much.

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They gave the name, the address, the occupation.

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And that's it. And the occupation sometime is very generic because gentle man doesn't mean much.

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So what it did was to compliment that kind of information using other sources, especially the census, the 1901 census, just 1901 onwards.

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Then you have time for it for me anyway. And that gives much more information about age sex.

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So the need in the state was a source of income and family relations,

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and that was really important for me to understand that we had we shall not happy to do that.

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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.

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And the competition was idea from that and nothing.

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So in other important preliminary point when Marconi.

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Just very, very briefly. I hope not. But not many Marconi people are experts here, because I have to be very brief.

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When Marconi arriving in London in 1897, he did not want to set up a company.

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His idea was to get a patent so it immediately for most obtain licenses.

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The royalties go back to Italy and set the down as a professional inventor.

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That was his plan and the plan for which he had support from his family.

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The idea of setting up a company came in London and it did not come from Marconi himself.

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The mastermind and the instigator of the company was his cousin, Henry Jamison.

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DAVIES Now, and in that, it was a mining engineer.

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From I mean being a family of of five now calling the merchants.

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Um, and he was, well, he worked for companies in London.

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As an expert in a milling machinery.

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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.

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Now, he was a. It's always important.

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He was in a pattern of patterns.

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And so therefore, when Marconi arrived in London,

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he was the ideal person to get in touch in order to get some assistance and some idea of how to get the value.

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Boston in England and he. DAVIES who suggested to create a company not only suggested the idea he only

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managed to get support from within his network of cold merchants in London.

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He was operating both in London and in that business.

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And I mean genius. And very soon he had. Connections, very extended connections.

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Incidentally, the idea of setting up the company was not at all well received by Marco and his family.

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They were strongly against it. So it was quite an upheaval.

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The struggle between Mckone and Davis and the family,

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to convince them that there was something in that idea or in that part in that could really transform themselves in commercially important.

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Now the baby is mentioned sometime in the.

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Not a thesis about the historical and but then again,

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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.

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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,

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this is a comment that was established only a few days after the creation of the company,

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but one of the most important donors that can contribute something, the electrician,

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so long as the company remains in its present pupa stage of development, its scene of usefulness must be obviously an exceedingly limited one.

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But of course it may develop into something different in which even the original stakeholders by enabling God.

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But then these off chances are more to the case of speculators than investors any more.

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So that way. Now he was right for many reasons that were shared by other important people.

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First of all, why wireless telegraphy?

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When there was telegraphy that was working perfectly well it master if ever it was make the work.

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Wireless telegraphy could be useful of all in those cases where cables could not be laid.

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We have such cases, for example, for communication between sure and cheap in general, between stations and other stations that we are in movement.

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But was it really possible to transform it into a feasible technology?

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The scientific community was definitely against it in the sense that, yes, it was.

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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,

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Marconi was using the ideas and the tools that had already been used by experimental physicists for their own for their own research.

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So there were four possibilities of litigation. But more important than that.

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The problem was that while telegraphy had intrinsic according to physicists,

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limits and out electromagnetic waves move in straight lines, they go all around the earth.

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So there was a limit. The the the the optical horizon, the young, which, uh, electromagnetic waves could not travel.

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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.

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Scientifically not prepare. Young inventor, develop this idea.

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This could only be achieved by someone who knew better about electricity and physics.

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Uh, so. This is to give you an idea of how risky and crazy, really important to be of telegraphy and the sun.

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So all where the people who decided to invest in this company.

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Now, this is the name of the first event, the subscribers of the company.

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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.

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A brief example. He was Irish when it was Irish.

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But nothing was off. But they were all part of the network of convergence based in London, in the Corn Exchange in London.

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Not all of them became members of the board of directors.

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Here are the names of those who did become members of the board of directors.

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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.

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Not only one. No. She was very quickly about some of these people.

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Especially those who became very important for the development of the company.

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First of all, William Smith them. They were he and his brother, the senior partner.

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So a very, very big meal in Lancaster in about and minutes.

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One of the most important meetings in that part of the country,

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one of the most advanced technological they were the first to use the main use the first to use electricity for lighting,

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the first to install sprinklers for fire prevention.

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So very much technologically advanced. They were all really representative of the top of the category.

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But let me say something more about the three of them.

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James Bannatyne. Yeah.

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I don't have a picture of him, unfortunately, but I have a picture of where he was living.

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Now, he was from a family of males in Limerick in Ireland, very prosperous company.

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But he decided he was not interested in the business.

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He decided to withdraw and send me this referral to someone else and will retire to this beautiful

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mansion in Exeter where Marconi was often invited and he likely would match his mother as well.

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Appreciated the invitation and he bannatyne remained for the rest of the story of the continent.

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The First World War, really one of the cornerstones of the company,

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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,

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the good bobbies. Again, this is a very interesting family, by the way.

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That is a book that has been published recently on the group Bodies.

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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,

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really, and developed a very big business. Their business was mainly tobacco at UTA, and only later they moved into corn milling.

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When they bought Valentines Factory.

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But they they also developed into stockbroking. I mean, good.

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Well, these are still one of the big stock brokers in London now.

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And they also develop partnerships abroad.

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They had a stock broking agency in New York. And so we should see that important.

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And here it is, the first man who became one of the members of the board of directors.

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Among many friends is Goodbody, a champion, tennis champion and football champion, by the way,

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played the important tournaments in Britain, Scotland, and he was one of the members of the board of directors in the game.

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The good qualities will remain for all our story and what absolutely critical more staunch supporters of Marconi and these the wireless project.

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Uh, no. The other side of this story.

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The shutters should go against the shoulders of the company was issued that it was a medium sized company and in

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the thousand shares the number of the shadows this is is legal says this show is small and is not only 99 people.

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And now here you have the number of shares that were taken at the end of December.

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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.

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I mean, Marconi received them as payment of his invention,

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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.

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Only few Scottish shareholders.

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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.

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At that stage, the majority of the votes, if you look, consider both the English and the Irish.

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About 60% of them we are call related, the people, people who had an interest or some connection with coal.

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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,

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but I don't want to deal with it now.

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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.

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Get the invention working for a short, medium distance.

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Shall it quickly make money and deal with it?

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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.

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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.

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Probably means that months went by in 1878.

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Sorry, 1897, but nothing was really coming out of this invention.

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In commercial films, Marconi was making progress.

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He was arranging demonstrations, especially in the South.

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So seeing a lot of the stations, which were also laboratories in a way,

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and there were also shop windows for all of our clients within potential customers to come and see the system at work.

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But they were also there always sort of sniffing around, but nothing was coming in terms of any concrete proposal for purchase.

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There were negotiations important with the General Post Office.

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With the Army and the Navy were interested both for the possibility of communicating between ships in navigation.

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They were also thwarting agencies interest in both public and private governments navigation companies.

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But nothing was coming off. In fact, the most important of the negotiations with the General Post Office was proving very, very complex.

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The post office was really trying hard to sort of contain the development of the

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company and find a way of getting hold of the idea of the into without being too much.

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So there were and they stole they were not they were not moving at that point in 1898 or 80, 90.

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Yes. They were already beginning within the company and among the board of the members of the directors to host to begin to

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emerge some disappointment with what was going on and some perplexity about the direction that things were taking.

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They wanted they insistent in trying to complete at least some of the agreements, some of these things and proceed.

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So there was clearly some dissent emerging within the company despite despite the fact that the company,

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Marconi, was making progress, especially on the distance of communication.

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They still had some problems with the problem with the interference between the stations

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community for the permitting and then and sort of overlapping one with the Arab with the other.

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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.

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And the decision was between two alternatives,

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either to go for the wide path of accepting the challenge of longer distance communication, and that meant moving in that direction,

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especially of Madina communication as a way of dealing also with one of the

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main problems emerging from the and post office and the post office medically,

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among other things, that no communication system was feasible in Britain, within Britain or between from the coast of Britain.

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They had to be called controlled by the general post offices.

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So the only time the. Of commercial proposition.

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Then the company was left with laws to provide not sale of apparatus, but service.

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In other words, the system was what was to remain in the hands of the company,

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and they were providing not only operators, but also the operators for people who wanted to use the system.

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That was the only way out from the restrictions imposed by Virginia Post Office,

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but that was a good idea only if it was possible to move on the long distance.

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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,

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with tests, with experiments, and they were going to be very expensive.

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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.

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And the reason that was explained was because of the expenses.

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In order to pursue that line of long distance, we are going to need to be much greater than in the past.

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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.

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Some of the members of the board resigned.

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Uh. And it was at that point that Marconi and they decided to bring in more Irish people.

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And the Irish people, all they brought in is the most important.

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What was William Goodbody?

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He was a stockbroker in Dublin, but he also had connections, as they say, in New York,

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with these cousin Robert new good buddies that I really think can be found by tens.

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It's a huge family. And to navigate, we'd be good buddies.

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So a. Now this is the change that takes place in the company as a result of these decision to change strategy.

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The English call called Merchants Disappear.

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What we mean is already the Irish partners, the head directors.

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The only addition is of a managing director instead of Germany.

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So maybe some was not a professional and they decided to hire a professional manager.

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Now, my question is how does this change in the board of the direction?

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I leave to reflect or not in the composition of the shareholders.

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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.

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And this is the new distribution of the shareholders.

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They are all Irish. Most of them.

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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.

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Same for the Reds. The landowner is the orange and the really small small thing.

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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.

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Probably seen kind of a challenge where Irish people.

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Now, if you want to see the more in detail, the number of shares, you can see that the Marconi shares went down.

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That's compared to the number of the shares that we have sold to other people, purchased by other people.

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But the number of the Irish shareholders is even greater than the number of the geographical distribution.

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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.

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Because among them, the good bodies, the Bannatyne Fergusson was the manager of the Bannatyne model,

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which was now controlled by the good bodies monies.

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The only people who are not called emergency on the bikes and they were shepherd builders.

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But this is related to people, merchants.

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So this they were really very important not only as individuals, but as groups, as families, very sort of diffuse families.

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And here is another interesting I don't know. I'm not an expert in these kind of things.

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I try to think of ways in which this kind of data can be visualised.

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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

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the others are all mainly Irish shareholders who decided to invest little money.

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There were people who were investing £10.

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Lots of them were investing and the funds. But really it's not big money and it is not big money.

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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.

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They are also other groups that emerged as important stockbrokers.

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Solicitors, barristers. Backlogs.

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Clergy, many of them women, lot with widowers, shopkeepers,

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really small investors who clearly we are not scared by the idea of a technology that was not going to make it.

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Now. How easy? This is the big question for me.

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Why the Irish people? Marconi was demonstrated.

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This exhibition in London is where people crowded.

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Every time he gave lectures in London and cheered.

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And when I enthusiastic about the invasion. But they did not put the money in the market.

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Indeed organise exhibitions, demonstrations also in Ireland they did.

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I mean the king sold. We got the for example was a big, big exhibition.

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I had a very successful one. People were they to see it.

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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.

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A very important demonstration was given for for Lloyds again in Northern Ireland.

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Again, very successful, very publicised. Sorry.

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So computing, I am still thinking about it because to me they are still about those questions that remain open,

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why they are, how they need to be, this message get through.

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My impression is that it was very much sort of driven the trust in the invention by these big family groups.

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They were very prominent in Irish life.

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People knew about them and people thought that if they believed in the invasion, there must have been something good.

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So there must have been a way of communicating.

315
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I can see by the addresses almost across the street you can see the line of thrusts that are emanating from these families.

316
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Certainly important was the role of the stock brokers, the Irish stock brokers of which,

317
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as they are shown there were meaning they were probably they were themselves shareholders.

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I imagine they were very important for convincing people to put some money.

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But I still have to find the way in which this mechanism works.

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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.

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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.

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And to finish.

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The other big question remains what happens when after 1992, one after the first transatlantic transmission, Marconi's company takes another big jolt,

324
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especially in the Marine section of the company, the one I was dealing with, the service providing service for commercial agencies.

325
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At that point, what I know is another kind of financial support will be seen and that they are big banks, not English.

326
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Belgian. And that is where the seven things I don't understand.

327
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They were coal merchants, diamonds.

328
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And this major connection. I still have to find out exactly what it means.

329
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But the money that comes in order to support the extraordinary new development.

330
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Because that just. Just a.

331
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Communication was done using batteries. Normal traditional batteries up to 1890, 98.

332
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Still they were using batteries.

333
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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.

334
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They were towers, huge towers themselves.

335
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We have technological, big technological innovations.

336
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So it's a completely new level of enterprise.

337
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And so that level of enterprise is a save. Money comes from somewhere else.

338
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We have the did the initiative show this remain?

339
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I don't know. That's the next stage of my research. But for the time being, we stop here.

340
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Thank you.