In article ,
None wrote:
You might enjoy reading Erik Larson's new book, Thunderstruck.
It's an entirely historical account of the efforts Marconi put into
getting wireless to work ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore, before
finally crossing the Atlantic. It's non-fiction told like a novel, with
a murder mystery intertwined that would later be closed via spark
wireless aboard a ship.

Great read if you want to get a little 'color' on the whole spark
era of 1899 - 1912 or so.

Dave - WB7AWK





TNX, I just reserved it online with my library.

FWIW, here is the Publisher's Weekly review

Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by James L. SwansonIn this
splendid, beautifully written followup to his blockbuster thriller,
Devil in the White City, Erik Larson again unites the dual stories
of two disparate men, one a genius and the other a killer. The
genius is Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless
communication. The murderer is the notorious Englishman
Dr. H.H. Crippen. Scientists had dreamed for centuries of capturing
the power of lightning and sending electrical currents through the
ether. Yes, the great cable strung across the floor of the Atlantic
Ocean could send messages thousands of miles, but the holy grail
was a device that could send wireless messages anywhere in the
world. Late in the 19th century, Europe's most brilliant
theoretical scientists raced to unlock the secret of wireless
communication.Guglielmo Marconi, impatient, brash, relentless and
in his early 20s, achieved the astonishing breakthrough in
September 1895. His English detractors were incredulous. He was a
foreigner and, even worse, an Italian! Marconi himself admitted
that he was not a great scientist or theorist. Instead, he
exemplified the Edisonian model of tedious, endless trial and
error.Despite Marconi's achievements, it took a sensational murder
to bring unprecedented worldwide attention to his
invention. Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a proper, unattractive little
man with bulging, bespectacled eyes, possessed an impassioned,
love-starved heart. An alchemist and peddler of preposterous patent
medicines, he killed his wife, a woman Larson portrays lavishly as
a gold-digging, selfish, stage-struck, flirtatious, inattentive,
unfaithful clotheshorse. The hapless Crippen endured it all until
he found the sympathetic Other Woman and true love. The "North
London Cellar Murder" so captured the popular imagination in 1910
that people wrote plays and composed sheet music about it. It
wasn't just what Crippen did, but how. How did he obtain the poison
crystals, skin her and dispose of all those bones so neatly? The
manhunt climaxed with a fantastic sea chase from Europe to Canada,
not just by a pursuing vessel but also by invisible waves racing
lightning-fast above the ocean. It seemed that all the world
knew.except for the doctor and his lover, the prey of dozens of
frenetic Marconi wireless transmissions. In addition to writing
stylish portraits of all of his main characters, Larson populates
his narrative with an irresistible supporting cast. He remains a
master of the fact-filled vignette and humorous aside that propel
the story forward. Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit
of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world,
while another's private turmoil made him a symbol of the end of
"the great hush" and the first victim of a new era when instant
communication, now inescapable, conquered the world. 14-city
tour. (Oct.)James L. Swanson's most recent book, Manhunt: The
12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, was published by Morrow in
February. Copyright ) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.