Thunderstruck

A battle rages through the pages of Thunderstruck that tells the story of how scientific advancement changed over the previous century. Marconi is instrumental in shifting discovery away from the theoretical sciences towards practical-use development. His entrepreneurial mindset did not exist in the late Victorian era. Larson writes: “The closest models for this kind of behavior were unsavory—for example, the men who made fortunes selling whack medicines” (90). And yet, between 1894 and 1920, Marconi would redefine how scientific discovery was undertaken, marking the beginning of a transition from collective theoretical exploration to practical-use, concept-owned research and development led primarily by corporations.

The story begins in Europe in the late 1890s when scientists were dominating the public conversation. Marconi arrives in London to find a city where scientific lecturers draw large crowds to the Royal Institution, a venue Professor Oliver Lodge described as “a sort of sacred place where pure science was enthroned to be worshiped for its own sake” (24). Science, as practiced by professors and lecturers, is respected and revered, and it begins to replace God: “The yawning void of this new ‘Darwinian darkness,’ as one writer put it, caused some to embrace science as their new religion” (72).

It is into this theoretically primed, collaborative, and open scientific scene that a poorly-educated Guglielmo Marconi arrives with his secret device. He does not understand the science behind why his device works, only that he has honed the device using trial and error. Larson notes, “His grasp of physical theory was minimal, his command of advanced mathematics nonexistent” (90). He is quickly labelled a fraud. His idea is so new, so unfounded in theoretical science, that it “would cause some to brand him a fraud and a charlatan” (35). Marconi understands that Hertz’s waves can be used to send messages. He believes the waves will become invisible carriers for human wireless communication, but “to the rest of the scientific world, what he now proposed was the stuff of magic shows and séances, a kind of electric telepathy” (30). Thus, Marconi is pitted against the leading scientists of his time, diminished to the lesser title of inventor. His secretive and paranoid nature does not help him win over skeptics.

Oliver Lodge, “a physicist of great renown” (23), is chief among the self-labeled Maxwellians, those who view science as a theoretical exploration; knowledge for knowledge’s sake being prime among their beliefs. They hold the view that theoretical exploration expands human understanding. In opposition to Lodge is William Preece, who becomes Marconi’s mentor: “To the Maxwellians, Preece was the king of ‘practicians.’ He and Lodge had more than once come to metaphoric blows over whether theory or everyday experience had more power to uncover scientific truths” (82). While the public respects Preece for his engineering and practical knowledge, they view Preece and Lodge as opposites.

Marconi aligned himself with Preece, gaining valuable resources from the Post Office but pitting himself against Lodge and other hard scientists. In his allegiance with Preece, Marconi is practical and entrepreneurial, calculating the value of Preece’s assets and assistance against what he could lose by sharing his device with the scientific community. The author notes that Marconi “was an entrepreneur of a kind that would become familiar to the world only a century or so later, with the advent of the so-called ‘start-up’ company” (90). He was an inventor and a businessman and shrewdly hedged his bets in favor of practical-use exploration. Marconi built a valuable empire based on his idea and protected it using patents and exclusive contracts and by beating competitors in releasing newer and faster services. He pioneered the idea of corporate research and development and changed how scientific advancement is viewed in the Western world.