Socio-political scenario in England in the 19th century, in the context of Marconi and wireless/radio
Radio was born at a critical moment in the development of the British warfare state when colonial and industrial rivalries kept a diplomatically isolated Britain at the brink of conflict. Events like the Fashoda Incident of 1898 (conflict between England and France over control over Africa) fed a sense of imminent European war, as did the Great Game with Russia (over Afghanistan). In the shadow of a global arms race and a growing conviction that new technologies conferred military and imperial advantages to whoever was first in the field, the turn-of-the-century British state invested more deeply in scientific research, and scientists, in turn, relied increasingly on state support. In this time of science and technology for and by the nation, Marconi was an interloper. Despite his mother's British ancestry, he was a foreigner and, worse, a tinkerer, not a theoretician like Newton and Maxwell the British were so proud of. Transmitting across the imperial map enabled Marconi to prove his bona fides as a servant of the British state and style himself nostalgically as a "tinkerer-explorer" of the dark continent of space.
With his pursuit of bringing long distances under control through radio, Marconi played on a related set of security concerns that were more political-economic in nature: Britain’s diplomatic isolation at a time of long-distance military conflict intensified calls for strengthening imperial ties, particularly among the “white” colonies of settlement, leading to Chamberlain’s post-war calls for a tariff federation (Tariff Reform League & Tariff Commission). While critics harped on the "technical security" weaknesses (Marconi for a very long time couldn't figure out how to tune his systems, thus making them susceptible to tapping and interference from other's transmissions) of Marconi's device for military use, he traded on the multiple valences of the security concern as he explored other avenues for sustaining his commercial venture. Having failed to find contracts among state departments, he redirected his energies toward the creation of a wireless network that would capture the communication market of the empire itself, fuelled by the need for "imperial security." A sympathetic non-technical press continued to couch this application of the technology in terms of "imperial security," overlooking "technical security." So, very subtly, Marconi stoked the fear and insecurity of the imperial British and got away with pushing his inferior wireless.
The Titanic debacle again brought the topic of Marconi's technical weaknesses to the fore.
Marconi had designated a new audience to adjudicate his claim to priority. The technical press’s implacable scepticism drove him into the arms of the lay press, where he strove to secure an alternative source of legitimacy as a businessman and scientist. In shifting the scene of the contest, he endeavoured not only to evade the biases of the scientific press but to exploit those of the lay press, which was seeking escape from the cable companies' stranglehold on its ability to fulfil growing demands for up-to-date news. The lay press also fell prey to Marconi's strategy of stoking fear and creating an urgency for "imperial security," totally ignoring quality.
These non-technical press reports styled Marconi as an imperial hero battling on the frontier of time and space itself. He filled the increasingly apparent iconographic void created by the Livingstones, Rhodes, and Cooks of the past, as the press hailed his “conquest of the air” and taming of the “trackless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.” The Conservative Member of Parliament, journalist, and postal reformer J. Henniker Heaton reminded Times readers that “[Marconi] has devoted his youth to working for England. Every one of his 130 patents benefits the Empire. The magical quality of electrical science in an age of occult fascinations, together with Marconi’s exotic origins and personal reserve, created an aura of the mystical genius conjuring knowledge from the void.
Clearly, some wider context shaped the path of radio's development.
If military needs had nevertheless remained the primary factor shaping early radio, we would have expected secrecy and directionality of transmission (Marconi's system was very easy to tap from any direction, hence provided zero secrecy, an absolute no-no for military use) to become Marconi’s primary preoccupations. But Marconi manipulated the narrative completely. He created a story around Radio being entrusted with the task of securing the ocean for imperial commerce and bridging the continental distances of an empire in the throes of long-distance warfare. Even after Marconi lost his institutional affiliation with the state, wireless remained tied to the notion of imperial security, albeit in the more allegorical form of an empire more closely knit, its constituents less autarkic, its form less fanciful.
Boer War (1899)
At the peak of the bloodshed, Rudyard Kipling wrote that “the ‘simple and pastoral’ Boer… seems to be having us on toast.”
The Anglo-Boer War was a pyrrhic victory that cost British taxpayers more than £200m; 22,000 troops never came home to a hero’s welcome, and more than 400,000 army horses, donkeys and mules were killed.
Mobile wireless was first attempted in this war. The mixed success in the war was also a matter of concern for the British - a major setback somehow averted in the history of their colonial expansion. In 50 years they lost almost all their colonies across the world, bringing the curtains down for a colonial era that had lasted more than 2 centuries (from British America in the 18th century to mid 20th century)
British science facing competition from the continent
Till the 19th century, British science had not much competition from anywhere else, especially from the continent. Newton ruled over everything and then the entire Industrial Revolution was propelled by James Watt's steam engine. England was the centre of all science and technology. With steam engines came the trains and maritime power - the two vital things for colonial expansion. Till the 19th century, the only competition to Newton was Rene Descartes. Even in the 19th century, people like James Maxwell were perhaps the most celebrated theoretician of the world - he discovered the existence of radio waves, and electromagnetic waves, and claimed that light is also a form of electromagnetic waves. But the end of the 19th century was also the end of the age of British supremacy/monopoly in science.
A letter from Fitzgerald to Heaviside (both Maxwellians) in 1896, about Marconi clearly shows the sentiment of the day: On the last day but one (that was actually after Bose's lecture at the meeting of the British Association in Liverpool), Preece surprised us all by saying that he had taken up an Italian adventurer (Marconi) who had done no more than Lodge & others (all British) had done in observing Hertzian (German physicist who experimentally proved that Maxwell's prediction about the existence of radio waves is correct) radiations at a distance. Many of us were very indignant at this overlooking of British work for an Italian manufacturer. Science “made in Germany” we are accustomed to but “made in Italy” by an unknown firm was too bad.
The entire quantum age was hijacked by Germany - Einstein (1905 - Special Theory of Relativity), Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Max Plank (1910) etc.
Marconi's challenges - technical, social and political
William Preece, a leading “practician,” was in a bitter dispute with academic scientists working on electromagnetic questions, particularly the distinguished professor Oliver Lodge. This was a moment in which the cosmopolitan “tinkerers” of an older era were engaged in a rearguard action against “theoreticians,” who disparaged them as mercenary relics oblivious to notions of intellectual property and national propriety.
When Marconi, a "tinkerer," contrasting to the rich British legacy of "theoreticians," found himself cornered by sceptics and critics, he took the debate to another venue—the popular press, where he traded on the shifting valences of the concern with "imperial security" and the press’s resentment of dependence on expensively cabled news. The press that Marconi relied on were: the conservative gentleman’s Pall Mall Gazette; the liberal provincial tradesman’s Manchester Guardian; the paper of record, the Times; the fashionable Illustrated London News; the liberal local Westminster Gazette; the cheap, mass, conservative Daily Telegraph; and the conservative, highbrow Spectator magazine.
Urge to claim cultural superiority in 19th-Century England
British history was not as old as that of the Germans or the French. The oldest people in England were the Celts, and the Irish and their language was older than English. The Anglo-Saxon period, the oldest part of English history was called the Dark Age due to the lacuna of historical records. Also, the Anglo-Saxons were considered mercenaries, not with any great culture or art. The Sutton Hoo (archaeological site that proved that the Anglo-Saxons were not mere barbarians) was yet to be discovered. Comparatively, India's history and languages were much older. The discovery of the new field "Indo Indo-European linguistics" placed Sanskrit as the oldest member of the clan. Germany appropriated the Sanskrit heritage and claimed they were the original Indo-Europeans and that Germany was the Indo-European Urheimat. So, the British had to invent an extreme form of Indo-phobia to paint Indian history as lowly and inferior. Hence Macaulay and others. Interestingly, the rest of the European continent didn’t see India in that light, mainly because the Germans were obsessed with Sanskrit, and people like Voltaire claimed that the Greeks learned from the Brahmins of Varanasi.
The Indo-European studies made many Europeans claim superiority in some way or the other - it was of course led by the Germans, which eventually degenerated into Nazism. But similar feelings germinated across the world. Nikola Tesla was openly anti-Semitic. Many in England had anti-Semitic feelings. And perhaps all this came from the Indo-European studies, which suddenly made the rest of the languages and races appear secondary when looked at narrowly. Domestication of horses and the introduction of chariots - the two most important symbols of power since the Iron Age civilizations (Persian, Greek, Roman, Indian) - were substantially proved to be of Indo-European origin. The same feeling fuelled the Indo-phobic viewpoints, which also helped a section of the British administration to rule over India.
In India, there were two schools - Orientalists, like William Jones (Asiatic Society), Princep (though an engineer, in charge of the Taratala mint, he deciphered the Brahmi script of Ashoka's inscription, the mother of all scripts in India and the far east), who wanted to give priority to Indian heritage and languages. The Anglicists wanted to replace everything with English, for various reasons, mainly administrative, to facilitate the running of the empire. A new generation of Indians - Rammohan, Dwarakanath, Vidyasagar etc - wanted both, English and also the Indian languages, and culture.
Few orientalists appreciated Indian culture, heritage, and languages, but felt Indians lacked scientific aptitude. This might be a vestige of East India Company's propaganda (Macaulay et al), or even the inherent view that "science is power" and that Indians should be deprived of science education forever. Medicine, engineering, and law were allowed just for administrative reasons.
As late as 1905, during the Partition of Bengal, Bombay and Madras Provinces didn’t yet have science at the university level. Bengal had, just because of Bose and PC Ray. There was no scope for employment with science. CV Raman in the 1910s came to Calcutta and joined a non-science job. Presidency College got India's first world standard science lab around 1915 when Bose was retiring. All researches of Bose and PC Roy were done privately. Even CV Raman did his entire research in Calcutta at the Association for the Cultivation of Science - even then, there were not enough labs.
Main characters: Marconi, Bose, Tesla, Nivedita/Mrs. Sara Bull & Tagore
Marconi
Homeschooled, no formal education. Son of a rich Italian landlord father and Irish aristocrat mother - the Jamesons, his mother's family, owned one of the oldest Irish whiskey brands in England (predating the popularization of the Scotch whiskeys). From the beginning, Marconi had access to politicians, high government officials, and of course huge money. Marconi's ventures, though publicly traded companies, were majorly funded by his rich relatives who didn't put any pressure for immediate profits - that was a huge commercial advantage against most other companies.
He had people to lobby within the parliament, influence the Admiralty, manipulate government, create chasms between different government departments, and of course all the money to hire the best lawyers, file costly lawsuits across countries, influence non-scientific media houses, spread rumours, run propaganda, etc.
He was a womaniser and used yachts for his revelries. Ditched his American fiancé to marry an Irish woman from a well-connected family. He amassed huge money at a very early age. At ripe age he even had an affair with an 18-year-old, and later married someone else, after divorcing his Irish wife. Became part of the fascist regime in Italy - but that would be out of our scope/timeline.
There are very strong reasons to believe that he used Tesla's transmitter and Bose's receiver for his first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission. Tesla's systems were well tuned, Marconi even stole that, and finally, the US Supreme Court ruled in Tesla's favour in 1943, in the first patent litigation to have reached the Supreme Court of the USA. He had died by that time, and the world politics had also changed hugely. US and Italy were warring sides and there was no way the Marconi side would have welded any influence by then. But till then, he repeatedly won most patent litigations, though they were quite blatant. This is where we would take some poetic license, connect some dots and explore how Marconi and his team would have manipulated the system.
Marconi's lawyer: J. Fletcher Moulton. He was a polymath - Cambridge Wrangler, mathematician, barrister, and Fellow of the Royal Society, experimented on electricity. Moulton became a Liberal Party Member of Parliament successively for Clapham 1885–86, South Hackney 1894–95, and Launceston 1898–1906. He backed the attempts of Gladstone to solve the problems in Ireland through Irish Home Rule. I have a strong feeling he was the main brain behind all of Marconi's strategies, which were mainly based on manipulation. We can use him like a Chanakya. A recent paper published by the Royal Society of London has pointed out his role in Marconi's success.
Tesla
Serbian by birth, bachelor, influenced by Vivekananda, both had met many times between 1893-96, was present at Vivekananda's Chicago lectures at Columbia Exposition. Was an admirer of Buddhism, and had a strong spiritual bent of mind. Interestingly, he had promised Vivekananda that he would prove that Akash (matter) and prana (energy) were convertible - Vivekananda referred to this in a letter. That's quite incredible because it would be a decade later that Einstein would talk about E=mc2.
Tesla knew many languages and knew Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe etc. by heart. Never married, few say he might have been gay. Had a platonic relationship with a friend's wife.
Invented AC machines, and fought the devastating Current War with Edison (backed by JP Morgan) to establish the primacy of AC over DC. Invented some of the most important aspects of wireless transmission. Though filed many patents, somehow, Maroni managed to file the first radio patent in the world appropriating the works of Tesla and a few others. Henceforth, made multiple attempts to prove his priority over Tesla's in prolonged legal suits, and even steal his works. Here also, some extrapolations can be made to connect many unfortunate things in Tesla's life with Marconi's diabolic efforts. There are at least two recorded instances of their meeting in person.
Tesla had a grand vision of transmitting energy, not just messages, wirelessly. That was much ahead of age. (Only a few years back a start-up in New Zealand was able to achieve finally something close to that) But Marconi caught the public imagination with wireless telegraphy.
Bose
A darling of the who's who of British science, highly promoted and supported by his teachers and friends in England. But faced immense challenges in India from the same British, mainly because they were not in favour of exposing the Indians to modern science.
Bose was also an experimentalist, like Marconi, not much of a theoretician. But was very methodical, had a scientific approach and regularly published his papers in the Royal Society, one of the best scientific journals in the world. His experiments on functional wireless systems in Calcutta predate Marconi. His first paper is at least a year before Marconi's first recorded experiment on wireless. Bose's speciality was in the receiver design - during his time, he had the best receiver in the world, at least for some time. It has been acknowledged formally in the electronics world that Marconi used Bose's receiver for the first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission but never gave him the credit. Rather, he made sure that Bose's name never came out.
It can be said quite conclusively that Bose was aware that Marconi had used his receiver. But why Bose kept quiet could be a matter of conjecture. We can connect dots here too - take some freedom to create some suspense. In fact, I think the climax could be the revelation that Bose had known all the time, but never said anything.
Like Tesla, Bose was also very spiritual. He started using Sanskrit names in scientific literature, moving away from the common practice of using Greek and Latin. I don’t know if anyone did that again in India. He used to quote from the Rig Veda, Upanishads even in lectures in London. Was highly inspired by the Indian concept that everything is that "One", and that all different things we see around us are only different manifestations of that same "One." This is the common Brahmo thought. This belief led him to "prove" that metals also have life, like plants and animals. He suddenly shifted from radio to this and it became very easy for Marconi to push him to oblivion, as the scientific fraternity that had hailed him a few years back now started feeling that he was mixing Indian metascience and spirituality with modern science. It took many decades to realise that he was the father of biophysics, plant neurobiology and plant cognition, among others.
Bose also played a pretty strong role, though indirectly, in the Swadeshi movement that sprung up around the partition of Bengal in 1905. But very interestingly, he never opposed the British openly, and Tagore and Nivedita supported him in that - they all felt that was the sacrifice for the sake of Indian science - Calcutta was the only place in India that had science at the university level and that too would have been stopped if Bose had opposed the British.
Unlike Tagore and Vivekananda, the strongest two Bengali personalities in the 19-20th century Bengal-India landscape, who couldn't be bridged, Bose was rather a bridge between many apparently divergent counterpoints. His mother was a staunch Kali worshipper, his father was Brahmo, and he was a Brahmo, too, but still maintained a very good relationship with the Ramakrishna Mission and other "Hindu" groups. Finding a bridge reflected in his works too - when he wanted to bridge the non-living with the living. This deep spiritualism impacted his science and came in very handy for Marconi to literally wipe him out of the scene.
Bose's relationship with Sara Bull and Nivedita was complicated. There's a good psycho-analysis done by Ashish Nandi on this. Bose used to call her "Mother" though she was eight years older. Nivedita had openly asked Vivekananda once if he thought anything was going on between her and Bose. And fortunately, Vivekananda didn't suspect anything. But Nivedita had once asked Bose if she was a temptation to him. Though Bose never said anything openly, he reacted jealously and childishly when Nivedita got close very to Okakura. Nivedita sort of broke up with Okakura, for various reasons and remained Bose's secretary, editor, collaborator and main motivation and inspiration till her last day.
Sara Bull forced Bose to file a few patents, with her as the co-applicant, both in London and the US. She would also pay Nivedita for the secretarial work she did for Bose. She paid for the land for the Bose Institute. She also left behind a good amount of money for Bose in her will - this was challenged by her daughter. It became a major scandal after Mrs Sara Bull died in 1911, a few months before Nivedita's death.
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