---from The Times of London---

Marconi daughter joins battle to save archive

BY NIGEL HAWKES, SCIENCE EDITOR




THE daughter of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, has joined
the fight to prevent the sale of a collection of documents and
apparatus belonging to the company her father founded.

Princess Elettra Marconi-Giovanelli, who lives in Rome, says in a
letter to The Times today that she is appalled to hear of the decision
by GEC-Marconi to sell the collection by auction.

The collection should remain intact in Britain "at all costs", she
says. Her views are supported by Lord Briggs, the historian whose work
includes a history of the BBC. He has also written to The Times,
saying that to disperse the collection would be "thoroughly
irresponsible".

GEC-Marconi announced last month that it had instructed Christie's to
sell the archive. The first of the material dates back 100 years, to
when the young Marconi, unable to find support in his native Italy,
arrived in Britain determined to make radio work. With backing from
Sir William Preece, chief engineer to the Post Office, he succeeded.

The collection, expected to raise £1 million when it comes up for sale
at Christie's South Kensington on April 24 and 25, contains many
fascinating objects, including "Marconigrams" sent from the Titanic
after she struck an iceberg.

An employee of the Marconi company was among the first to know of the
outbreak of the First World War. An engineer intercepted a German Army
message informing forces that war had been declared. The message,
picked up a day and a half before the official announcement and
hastily scribbled on the back of a company order form, is expected to
raise about £3,000.

A leading objector to the sale is John Sutherland, a former managing
director of Marconi Radar. "I think there is an indifference to the
Marconi name in the present GEC-Marconi management and a lack of
feeling for the integrity of the Marconi inheritance," he said.

Behind the sale lies a story of disillusionment between the company
and the museum world. A Marconi spokesman said that three years ago
the company began examining the collection in anticipation of
celebrating the centenary of Marconi's first patent. Material held in
the collection at Great Baddow, Essex, and objects lent to museums
were examined. "We found that a very large proportion of items on
long-term loan were poorly conserved, damaged or lost," the spokesman
said. He would not say which museums were involved.

The company then proposed an anniversary exhibition at a major museum.
The suggestion was turned down. Again, the company refuses to name it,
but the Science Museum would have been the obvious choice. The Science
Museum declined to comment last week. A proposed exhibition at the BBC
in Portland Place also came to nothing. GEC-Marconi considered the
possibility of building a museum to house the collection, but balked
at the cost of "many millions of pounds", the spokesman said. Faced
with evidence that neither museums nor, apparently, the public were
much concerned about the material, the company decided to sell.

The money raised will be used to set up an electronics training scheme
for teachers, to be run by the Institution of Electrical Engineers,
and to create a CD-Rom on the life and work of Marconi for schools and
libraries.

Gerry Wells, who runs a wireless museum in south London, said: "GEC
shouldn't be destroying their heritage and ours. Marconi had to come
here to show the world how to do it ­ we should be proud of the role
Britain played, not dispersing it to the four corners of the world."

Rod Berman, a collector of early radio valves, said that the £1
million sale estimate may be easily exceeded. "I'm horrified to see it
come under the hammer," he said. "We shall see a lot of heavyweight
foreign buyers and it will be dispersed all over the world."

Marconi's daughter, speaking from Rome, said she was "shocked and
heartbroken" by the sale. She would like the collection to stay in
England, but otherwise will ask the Italian Government to bid for the
archive.








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