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Language: en

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This is Poldhu, in Cornwall.

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This is about as far south and west as you
can get on the British mainland:

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from here you have an uninterrupted line due
west to Newfoundland in Canada.

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And from here, Guglielmo Marconi and his team
proved

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that you could transmit radio signals over
the horizon.

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In 1903, though, Marconi turned his attention
in another direction.

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Literally. About 400km east from here.

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He was going to produce the first public demonstration

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of long-range wireless transmission.

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Signals from here,

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from this now-ruined building in Cornwall,

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would be detected in Chelmsford, rebroadcast,

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and then picked up at a very public event
in London.

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And so, in the prestigious lecture hall of
the Royal Institution,

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where Faraday and many, many others gave public
talks on science -- and still do --

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the well-respected physicist, John Ambrose
Fleming,

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was getting ready to receive Marconi’s Morse
code signal.

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They’d added a special, 60-foot antenna
to the roof for the occasion.

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And this is more than a century ago, remember.

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Marconi was sending a signal powerful enough
to be picked up 300 miles away.

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And more than that: he’d claimed that he’d
solved the problem of people listening in.

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In a letter to the St James Gazette, Marconi
claimed:

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“I can tune my instruments so that no other
instrument that is not similarly tuned

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can tap my messages.” Which is technically
true,

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but what he’s describing there is tuning
into a radio station.

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Get the frequency right, and the whole world
can listen.

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That’s not encryption: that’s broadcasting.

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So let me tell you about Nevil Maskelyne.

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Music hall magician, like his father.

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Interested in wireless technology, used it
in his illusions,

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managed to do wireless transmission himself --

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but the problem was, Marconi had patented it.

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I know, it sounds ridiculous now,

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but the very idea of wireless transmission
was brand new,

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and Marconi had a patent.

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You want to send Morse Code through the air?
You had to license it.

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Maskelyne was not happy about this.

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He'd already built a 50-foot mast near one
of Marconi's stations in Cornwall

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and managed to intercept transmissions.

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And he'd written to a journal with the wonderfully
scientific insult that

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"the problem was not interception, but how
to deal with the enormous excess of energy".

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Marconi and Fleming knew who Maskelyne was,

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and they were worried about him.

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I'm making this sound just like a couple of
rivals,

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by the way, because I'm simplifying:

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there were many scientists working on similar
projects,

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and all of them had to deal with Marconi's
patents.

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Competition was fierce. But only one of them
actually went on the attack.

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So in the Royal Institution,

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a few minutes before Marconi's signal was
due to arrive,

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as the audience waited and listened to Fleming
make

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what we now know to be slightly dubious claims
about the system,

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there was a quiet tapping noise from the receiver.

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Fleming was somewhat deaf. He didn't notice.

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But his assistant did, and his assistant knew
Morse Code.

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And that receiver was saying "rats". "Rats,
rats, rats, rats, rats".

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And then it tapped out an insulting rhyming
couplet about Marconi,

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and then a few suitably sarcastic quotes from
Shakespeare.

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And then it stopped, just in time for Marconi's
actual transmission to come through.

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Marconi and Fleming were angry.

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They thought they'd been sabotaged by some
subtle method,

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perhaps by sending slightly out-of-phase signals,

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or grounding an earth current nearby, but no.

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Maskelyne had just rigged up a simple but
powerful transmitter

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in his music hall a little way away.

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He'd not bothered with frequencies,

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he'd just sent out a broad-spectrum transmission
that

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-- if it was sent today --

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would have shown up on every analogue radio
for miles around,

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no matter what station it was tuned to,

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and probably blown any sensitive equipment
nearby.

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Their arguments went on in the press,

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in angry letters in the Times:

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Fleming called it "scientific hooliganism",

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and Maskelyne owned up and defended his hacking
--

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because that’s what it was -- as a necessary
demonstration.

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But it was the public’s opinion that mattered:
and to them,

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Marconi's credibility had taken a big hit.

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Even the famous satirical magazine, Punch,

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decided to take a shot at him,

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publishing deliberately jumbled fake “Marconigrams”.

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In modern security, we talk about responsible
disclosure.

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About how, if you find a security hole,

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you should quietly go to the company in question,
let them know,

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and give them time to fix it.

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But if, after a reasonable amount of time,

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the flaw is still there, and they are not
going to fix it,

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and if you can demonstrate it in a way that
doesn't break the law or cause harm...

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well, sometimes it's okay to cause a little
bit of drama.

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After all, you've got more than a century
of history behind you.

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The Royal Institution's YouTube channel has
a load of great videos on it,

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including Tales From The Prep Room,

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which is a series I recommend you go check
out.

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Have a look at their channel, go and subscribe,

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and thank you very much to them for letting
me film in this historic theatre.

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