[emeritus]

The Marconi collection is lucky to have survived. When the "New Marconi" was going down the plughole and looking to sell anything of value to satisfy its creditors, the story put out to the press was that the building housing the collection was in a bad state and the collection was likely to suffer deterioration. Odd, as it was housed in a purpose-built, heated, building at the Marconi Research Centre where I was based, and it had looked fine to me the last time I had visited it!

Princess Elettra was interviewed in a Radio 4 news programme that had an item on the prospective sale, and she didn't mince her words, accusing the company of deliberately lying. I did record the programme and later gave a copy on cassette to the company archivist, so it should be in the collection somewhere. The company got one of the auctioneers (Sotheby's I think, possibly Christie's) to catalogue the entire collection in readiness for selling its individual items to the highest bidders, which would have resulted in its dispersal. Apparently one wealthy American expressed interest in acquiring the collection of original Marconigram hand-written message forms relating to the Titanic that he was proposing to distribute to guests at a large party he was organising. There were/are several filing cabinet drawers full of them.

The trustee, whose whose name I unfortunately cannot recall, delved into the archives to see who actually owned them. She unearthed documentary evidence that the bulk of the collection was actually the personal property of Marconi himself and not the company. Therefore the company had no right to sell the collection as it did not belong to them. It is entirely thanks to her diligence that the Marconi collection exists as an entity today. She occupied the room next to me for about a year until she left on maternity leave, and the collection was transferred to Oxford shortly after.

GEC never made much of the Marconi archives, although they were pleased to allow anyone to visit on request (such as parties from local schools, who were apparently fascinated by the working spark transmitter and receiver). I made several visits when I was working at Baddow. There were rows of cabinets on which the exhibits were laid out, with only a few of the rarer items such as early valves, being locked in glass cabinets, and the archivist was always pleased to open up items so you could inspect the inner workings, and even handle some of them yourself. Happy days!

A copy of a poster dating from circa 1990 that was on noticeboards around the site is attached.