From:          Antony F Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
To:            <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:       Marconi Archives
Date:          Sat, 22 Feb 1997 15:01:04 -0000

>From the Times of Saturday 22 February:

                                                  GENERAL NEWS

      Protest led by inventor's daughter halts £1m sale of  Marconi archive

                     BY NIGEL HAWKES, SCIENCE EDITOR

    PLANS to auction the Marconi collection of historic documents and artefacts from the
    early days of radio have been shelved after protests led by Marconi's daughter,
    Princess Elettra Marconi-Giovanelli.

    GEC-Marconi has reconsidered its decision to sell the collection at Christie's next
    month and the auction house has suspended printing of the catalogue. The company
    chose to sell the collection after deciding that building a museum to store and display
    it would cost far more than it was worth. The sale was expected to raise £1 million.

    Opposition to the sale quickly grew in a flurry of letters to The Times. The principal
    criticism was that an auction would disperse the collection and make it inaccessible to
    scholars and the public.

    An alternative to dispersal involving the Science Museum and perhaps other
    museums is now being discussed, with those close to the negotiations confident that
    a solution can be reached. Princess Marconi-Giovanelli, who is in England to continue
    the campaign to keep the collection in Britain, has met Sir Neil Cossons, director of the
    Science Museum, and yesterday visited Chelmsford in Essex, where her father
    established the Marconi company to exploit his patents. She had a meeting at the
    offices of the borough council and later visited the GEC-Marconi plant.

    She said: "The Science Museum is being very helpful. I am hoping that everything will
    go well, thanks to the pressure of opinion against the sale. My father's equipment
    belongs to England, and that is where it should stay."

    The Science Museum and GEC issued a statement after the first meeting, saying they
    believed that a basis existed for a solution "which will ensure that the Marconi
    Collection remains intact and in this country". Another statement was promised once
    further progress had been achieved, "when the company would expect to be in a
    position to withdraw the collection from public sale". That is not expected for a week
    or two.

    Any solution short of selling the collection is likely to involve the injection of money
    from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Christie's, which has already spent time cataloguing
    the collection, will need to be reimbursed.

    Guglielmo Marconi came to Britain as a young man in 1896, after carrying out
    successful radio experiments in his parents' home in Italy. He was supported by the
    Post Office and within a few years had demonstrated long-range transmission of radio
    waves.

    The collection owned by GEC-Marconi has been stored at Chelmsford for many years.
    Documents include "Marconigrams" sent by the doomed liner Titanic as it sank in the
    North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg in 1912. The final message read: "Sinking. We
    are putting passengers off in small boats. Weather clear."

    The invention of radio is a confusing subject. Several scientists demonstrated the
    transmission of radio waves, but none was able to commercialise the invention until
    Marconi arrived from Bologna. His success was rapid, with the first radio signals
    being sent across the English Channel in 1898, and across the Atlantic in 1901. He
    won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909.










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