Robert's Radio Magic column in The Canadian Amateur (TCA), the national publication of Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC), started off the year 2020 with a three-part series titled "Magic, Myth and Marconi." I highly recommend the series for its level of detail on Marconi's life and career around that time, which most of us had never been exposed to before. I highly encourage my own readers to check out these articles before we take our final look at the RCA Radio Central story in the March-April LOWDOWN because Marconi's ruthlesness and monopolistic nature also carried over to his former employees like David Sarnoff, decades later.Part 1
www.va3rom.com/docs/RM042.pdf
Part 2
www.va3rom.com/docs/RM043.pdf
Part 3
www.va3rom.com/docs/RM044.pdf
The 1901 Wireless Diary of George Kemp
www.va3rom.com/docs/The%201901%20Wireless%20Diary%20of%20George%20Kemp.pdf
Personally, I cannot assert with complete conviction that Marconi outright lied. I certainly agree with John Belrose's technical assessment that rception was highly unlikely, a view that LWCA member Ian Baines also shared in The LOWDOWN last summer. The reason I don't entirely rule out the possibility, though, is that I have encountered enough daytime AM BCB DX from NYC into southeast Kansas on winter afternoons to think there's just the very slightest chance that just enough microvolts may have made it all the way across an all-seawater path that was half in darness by 3 PM in Nova Scotia. It does seem highly improbable, and would have required very low QRN and just exactly the right biasing of the Italian Navy mercury detector to hear the signal Mr Kemp described. So, perhaps not entirely impossible, but certainly not readily repeatable; and thus, more likely that Signor Marconi stretched the truth to, if not past, the breaking point.
Now if only he had thought to put his iPhone on Record mode....