A few months later, back at the Ri, an expectant audience was waiting for the young Fleming to organise his equipment in the lecture theatre, when the apparatus suddenly began to tap out a message. To the audience, it sounded just like a rhythmic tapping noise, but to Fleming and his assistant, it was a clear message. And it wasn’t the one they were expecting.
At first, the message spelt out just one word repeated over and over: ‘Rats’, ‘Rats’, ‘Rats’. Then it changed to a poem accusing Marconi of "diddling the public” - there was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quiet prettily (further lines followed). It was obvious to Fleming that the demonstration had been hacked.
The obscure message that had mysteriously arrived suddenly stopped shortly before Marconi’s signal from Cornwall arrived. However, the damage was done. If someone could interrupt the inventor of the apparatus while he was showcasing it to the public, then no message could be safe. Fleming was incensed at the intrusion on his friend’s breakthrough and wrote a strongly worded letter to the Times calling the act of hacking ‘scientific hooliganism’.
Desperate to know how and what had happened, Fleming appealed to readers of The Times to unmask the culprit responsible. This proved to be an unnecessary task as Maskelyne was quite happy to reveal his part, in his own letter to the Times four days later, justifying his act on the grounds that the public needed to know that there were flaws to this secure system.
It may have been an unintended ‘first’, but as a first nevertheless, Neville Maskelyne’s exposure of the flaws in Marconi’s wireless deserves its place in the litany of firsts witnessed by a public audience during a Discourses at the Royal Institution. The first announcement of the discovery of the Electron (when JJ Rutherford spoke for an hour without actually saying the word ‘electron’). The first announcement of photography, and of colour photography, the first demonstration of moving images and the first recording and playback of sound, to name but a few.
And after 200 years of firsts, Ri Discourses are the world’s longest-running series of science lectures for adults and still take place in our Theatre today. Visit our what’s on pages to discover upcoming Discourses and other Theatre talks where scientists and the public can come together to share their passion for science.