Archive for Marconi Veterans Association

by

Tim Wander

 

By the end of 1898 Guglielmo Marconi’s fledgling new Wireless Telegraph Company was just over two years old. The young Italian engineer was exhausted from endless months of intense testing and developments, trying to prove that his system of wireless communication was a viable commercial proposition. But Marconi had no customers and his company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. However Marconi was no ordinary man. He believed in his system and he believed that the orders would come and that he would need to fulfil them.

In January 1899, in a brave, perhaps even reckless move, he opened the world’s first wireless factory in Chelmsford, employing 20 people. For a time his new factory had to scramble for sub-contract manufacture, but over the next 13 years the Hall Street Works engineers, technicians and staff were to build the foundations of a new wireless age.

Soon the Hall Street Works would send equipment to the Boer War, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and supply the huge Poldhu and Clifden transatlantic stations. In December 1901, against all the odds, Marconi managed to receive a wireless message sent across the Atlantic Ocean, over 2,170 miles, and much of the equipment was built in the Hall Street Works. Despite Marconi and his Company becoming world famous it was still a desperate struggle to find paying customers for his new ‘wire-less’ system. On 8^th May 1901 the Royal Navy would place the first order for 32 sets, which was increased to 108 sets by 1905.

The Hall Street Works then supplied all the equipment for Marconi’s growing network of coastal wireless stations and started to equip increasing numbers of civilian ships. The factory supplied customers across the globe including the Amazon Basin, Hawaii, Congo, Thailand, South Africa, India, Canada and even to both sides in the Balkan War of 1912. It was Marconi wireless equipment manufactured in Hall Street installed aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic that saved over 730 people when the great ship was lost in 1912 and over 760 people when the RMS Lusitania was sunk in May 1915. This successful use of wireless for safety at sea effectively generated a new and vast market for Marconi’s equipment.

In the same year the Hall Street Works officially closed its doors as the huge New Street Works took over the workload and the world’s first wireless factory fell silent, apart from its wireless station across the road that continued to eavesdrop on the German fleet feeding vital intelligence to the Navy’s top secret Room 40 code breakers. It was this and all the work done at Hall Street that ensured that Britain and the Marconi Company were ready to face the extreme demands of a world now at war.

 

Saving the World’s First Operational Radar Station!

Bawdsey Radar wins Heritage Lottery Fund support for its Transmitter Block project

Bawdsey Radar has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1.4m as part of a £1.8m project to conserve the Transmitter Block building on Bawdsey Manor Estate in Suffolk. The Transmitter Block was built in 1938 and was a key building at RAF Bawdsey, the world’s first operational radar station.  The major site construction work will start in September 2016 and an exciting new exhibition will open in September 2017 allowing all visitors to explore and find out about this pioneering radar site.

The building has become a focal point for the local community on the Deben Peninsula. Christine Block, Bawdsey Radar Trustee and a Member at Suffolk Coastal District Council has commented,

“We’re delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund has given us this funding. The Transmitter Block has always been really well supported by local people. It represents such a key moment in our recent history that the community is really excited to feel that the building is going to survive and tell its’ unique story.”

As well as plans for conserving the fabric of the building, Bawdsey Radar will be working to develop ways, physical and virtual, in which more people can visit the site and understand the importance of the radar heritage that the Transmitter Block represents.  New displays within the Transmitter Block will tell the story of radar and its significance in WW2.  Radar helped win the war by playing a vital part in the Battle of Britain in 1940 and it is estimated the technology helped shorten the war by two years.  An important part of the project will be providing opportunities for learning about radar’s fascinating social and scientific history, and about how the early work at Bawdsey laid the foundation for our current age of electronics leading to inventions such as GPS, accurate weather forecasting, speed safety cameras and even the microwave oven!

by

Tim Wander

This is the detailed story of Marconi’s intense, five year struggle from 1896-1901 to develop a reliable and practical wireless communication system. It was a constant search for distance and reliability, often in the face of appalling weather. Step by step Marconi overcame countless technical difficulties, battling seemingly insurmountable problems of physics and engineering as his embryonic system began to take shape.

It was also a battle for public, press, commercial, military and scientific acceptance. It quickly became a war of money and ideas as Marconi fought against international and state sponsored competitors who deployed every form of industrial espionage and legal challenge. Each was determined to claim a piece of the new science and try to take control of what soon became a new industrial revolution.

Twelve years in the writing and with fifteen years of research behind that – the goal of the new book was ‘simply’ to fully document the first five years of the young Guglielmo Marconi’s career. My long held passion was to pull the whole story together, step by step and site by site with as many photographs and sketches as possible. The new book tells the complete story of the difficult birth and desperate battles that took place to make a practical system of wireless communication a reality.

Throughout the story I have challenged the established history and time lines, visited every site, interviewed local historians, combed through local archives and of course recorded what still remains. I have also attempted, as a old-time wireless engineer, to re-interpret each experiment and try to understand what happened there. Hence the book contains an extensive ‘Then and Now’ Appendix along with an extensive glossary and Appendices that keep the technical sections out of the main text.

I have also included a personal chapter on Marconi the man – attempting to paint a portrait of this exceptional man, that no one alive today has met – based in part on contemporary accounts and on his reaction to the struggles he overcame. But this is not just Marconi’s story – credit is given to all the  pioneers of wireless whose names have largely been forgotten, but each of whom played their part in the amazingly rapid development of wireless communication.

In the end it was only Marconi who won through. He had the vision, self belief and force of character to build a working system and prove it under the harshest of climates. In doing so he built a huge company and a whole new industry, straight from the laboratory bench. But it was a close run thing. Many times during the first five years he nearly lost the race to tame Heinrich Hertz’s wireless waves. But what he achieved on bleak windswept cliffs and basement laboratories around Britain’s shores changed the world as we know it.

NOW Available. 750 pages, over 750 photographs – many of them never published before.

Hardback. r.r.p. £24.95 plus p&p (£3.90 signed/tracked/insured)

The first 50 copies will be signed, (dedicated if asked)  and numbered by the author.

Offer to all Marconi Veterans and members of the Marconi Heritage Association – a signed/numbered copy of the book for £25 including postage and packing. Please email the author direct at timwander@compuserve.com for details or order through the website marconibooks.co.uk (add comment MVA or MHA member). Also available through Amazon.

A talk by Tim Wander

Wednesday 21^st October 2015 at 19:30

Venue: Anglia Ruskin University, Marconi Building Room 001

For over 100 years the Marconi Companies’ work in Chelmsford and Essex dominated and defined the modern age of electronics, radio, radar, television and mobile communications. The Company had a massive impact on the working and social lives of tens of thousands of Essex people, as well as on the County’s townscapes, especially that of Chelmsford.

In his talk Tim Wander will focus on the the rise and fall of the Marconi Company and the wireless communication industry in Essex starting with an introduction to Marconi’s early career, focusing on the development of the Hall Street works and then tell something of the story of the New Street works until their demolition in 2012.

This will be illustrated with many slides, some previously unseen and questions will be actively encouraged at the end of the talk!

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Tim Wander is currently working with the Northwood House Charitable Trust Ltd in Cowes on the Isle of Wight where he is Building and Major Projects Manager overseeing the current phases of renovation works for the large Grade II* Country House and Park.

Tim is perhaps better known as an historic consultant, author, lecturer and journalist specialising in the Marconi Company, Marconi’s early work, Chelmsford’s Industrial History and the birth of radio broadcasting.

He has published numerous books including ‘Marconi on the Isle of Wight’, ‘Marconi’s New Street Works 1912 –2012’, ‘2MT Writtle – The Birth of British Broadcasting’, ‘Marconi and World War One’ and the ‘Marconi Company and Writtle’ as well as writing numerous papers, brochures and research reports which include submissions for listed status and lottery funding. He has written several radio plays for the BBC and has just completed a detailed account of the first five years of Marconi’s work (‘Guglielmo Marconi – Building the Wireless Age’ – due September 2015).

 

This talk is organised by Chelmsford Science and Engineering Society http://www.chelmsfordses.org.uk/ as a special event for the Chelmsford Ideas Festival – you do not have to be a scientist or engineer to enjoy this talk and learn more about Chelmsford’s important history!

 

        Chelmsford Ideas Festival 2015

 

 

Ideas Festival Programme Click here