East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1905-06-13
MARooNI THE MAGICIAN.


To become famous in five conti-
nents at "a, and to crown this rare
feat by winning for his wife the
charming daughter of a peer, is such
good fortune as falls to the lot of few
men in = generation. And yet this
is but part of the wonderful achieve
ment of Gugliemo Marconi, who has
led one of Lord Inchiquin's fair sis
ters to the altar and is spending part
of his honeymoon, by the invitation
of King Humbert. in the principal
royal palace of Italy.
If ever a man was justified in
counting himself the favored child
of fortune, surely it is this young
Italian. who leaped i'm four short
years from obscurity to fame, and
who, while still in the COS, has made
his name a household world all the
world over.
And, perhaps an equally remarka-
BILE thing, he remains as unspoilt as
when he was an obscure student at |
Bologna. Italy. and spent his spare |
hours dabbling in chemistry in the |
laboratory in his fathers house at |
Griffore. In those days-and they
are only 10 years removed from now
he was deeply Interested in cleo
tricity, but only as hobby.
Il had fitted up a rude labora-
tory, or workshop" he says, sin my
fathers house near Bologna, where
l had begun to work with primary
batteries and thermopiles, graphing
with the problem which has puzzled
| so many inventors-a method of
! trasforming heat directly into cleo
| tricity. 1 had also experimental with
the utilization of steam i'm engines,
and had likewise been deeply interest
! ed in chemistry" But he had then
no more idea of fame or of the direc-
| ton in which it would come to him
than the man in the moon.
1t was the reading, in 1894, in an
Italian journal of the work of Prof
fessor Hertz that first suggested the
idea of sending messages through
space by means OF electric waves
but as he says, "the idea seemed so
simple and evident to me that at first
l had no thought of attempting prac-
tical experiments to demonstrate its
possibility, because / knew there were
many clever men in the world eXper-
| imenting with electric waves and |
thought someone would quickly work
out the problem"
1t is characteristic of the unset
fishness and modesty of the man that
he actually waited nearly a year to
| give others Il chance of taking the
palm which he knew he had but to
stretch out his hand to make his own;
Z and it nn1N- Nzrb nj,
sign of it's being appropriated that
he began to make his experiments,
and quickly succeeded in sending
aerial messages a couple of miles
across his fathers estate. What has
happened since those prentice days
how he has since sent winged mes
sages across the wide Atlantic, has
made it. possible for ships to hold
converse q thousand miles apart, and
how i'm fact, he has, with almost a
wizards magic. annihilated space
the world knows.
And what kind of a man is this ma
gician who has still to see his 3Oth
birthday? This is how he is describ-
ed by one who knows him well: "a
slight young man, of medium height,
: but who scarcely looks it, with brown
, hair, cut short, and parted at the
side, a slight grown mustache, deep
set blue eyes and a look of boyishness
which ne never seems to outgrow.
Just the kind of neat. well groomed
young man you see by the thousand
in the streets of London"
In fact, few men of fame ever
5 looked the part less than this Won
Il 1nrfIIl italian unnhaCty
too, amounts almost to diffidence; he
will talk charmingly on any subject
t but himself and is ready to take to
4 his heels at the mere mention of the
word interviewer" And yet he is
sufficiently human to confess that at
is nice to be famous" and to enjoy
the fruits of his genius and indus
e try
g Perhaps the most remarkable thing
about him is his voice, which is soft
and low and musical--the voice, In
e fact of his native Italy; and the con.
g trast between his slow, deliberate
g method of talking and his restless
tireless energy when at work, is al
y marked as that between his modes
1t ty and his achievements.
q He has none of the eccentricitie
10 which seem to be the usual accom-
paniment of genius. When he wa
IL once asked whether, like Edison, n
d was ever so absorbed in his worl
,e that he forgot to eat. he answered
81 think never. You see my stom
ach always cries out at the prope
Is moment, and l always hasten to ODE
IN its call" And to the question, "Yoi
.o / wouldn't have starved for wireless
- telegraphy?" he replied with smile
mo, indeed; 1 have too good a diges
ton"