MARCONI WIRELESS TELEGRAPH COMPANY – A collection of material relating to the evolution of

MARCONI WIRELESS TELEGRAPH COMPANY – A collection of material relating to the evolution of broadcasting in the early 20th century, comprising:

A copy of the telegram sent by the Supreme Allied Commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, to his commanders-in-chief after the signing of the armistice, received by Marconi House London, 5.45 a.m. 11 September 1918, Marconi House, London, in pencil on a sheet printed ‘Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd’, two pages, 4to (small tears at folds, light soiling to margin).

Sent shortly after the armistice was signed at 5 a.m., Foch's telegram seems to have been picked up by Marconi House (Strand, occupied by the Marconi Telegraph Company from 1912-33), which at the time was operating as an unofficial radio broadcaster. The message is copied in flawed French, beginning: ‘Les hostilités seront arrététs sur tout le front a partir du onze novembre onze heures...’;

[with :] a collection of approximately 15 further items, chiefly typed letters, November 1920 - January 1922, relating to the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company’s authorisation in 1922 to broadcast programmes ‘for amateurs’, including letters from the General Post Office to W. W. Bradfield – the director at Marconi – debating whether the Government would agree to the transmission of music ‘unless it could be shown that such transmission would serve a useful or scientific purpose as well as affording pleasure to the hearers’, then authorising 15 minutes of ‘telephony (speech and music)’ in one example from January 1922; with further printed ephemera relating to early broadcasting;

[and:] an R1 triode valve made by Western Electric, type 102 A, [pre-1919], with a spherical bulb (bearing the transmitter number 101788) and 4-pin base, the valve holder marked ‘PAT APPLIED FOR’ and ‘RECEIVING TUBE SOCKET/ SIGNAL CORPS U.S. ARMY/ WESTERN ELECTRIC CO. INC. 203 A/ G F- F+ P’. Western Electric developed durable valves for the wireless transceivers used by the US Signal Corps during the First World War.

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