Some Early Marconi Experimental Apparatus Reappraised

Abstract

In 1920 the Marconi Company gave the Institution of Electrical Engineers a small collection of pioneering wireless telegraphy apparatus for the Institution’s museum. Three years later these items were passed to the Science Museum, London. Though displayed there until the 1960s, they have been more recently in store and their historical importance overlooked. The paper discusses the background to the original gift and the technical significance of each item.

Keywords:

• Marconi Company
• Institution of Electrical Engineers
• Science Museum
• Newfoundland
• patents
• wireless telegraphy
• experimental
• billi
• transatlantic
• Italian Navy detector

Dr Tony Constable read a draft of this paper and made many valuable comments. I am also grateful to the staff of the IET Library and IET Archives, in particular Anne Locker, Asha Gage and Sarah Hale, for their help in making books and documents available and for scanning the photograph of the 1931 Faraday exhibition. I must also thank my colleagues in the Science Museum, London, and the Science Museum Library, too many to name individually, for their wholehearted assistance at various stages of this research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Liffen

John Liffen is Curator of Communications at the Science Museum, London. In 1998–2000 he was a content developer on the major synoptic gallery ‘Making the Modern World’ and later worked on a web version of the exhibition. At present he is a member of a Science Museum project team developing a major new communications gallery which is due to open in autumn 2014. He has published many papers and articles on aspects of telecommunications history and on early railways. The present paper is one of several in which he has adopted forensic techniques to test the given provenance and historical significance of various important museum artefacts.

Correspondence to: John Liffen. Email: [email protected]