132

Alexander Graham Bell

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:18,000.00 - 20,000.00 USD
Alexander Graham Bell

Bidding Over

The auction is over for this lot.
The auctioneer wasn't accepting online bids for this lot.

Contact the auctioneer for information on the auction results.

Search for other lots to bid on...
Auction Date:2013 Jun 19 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS, one page, 8 x 10, Beinn Bhreagh letterhead, October 9, 1902. Letter to to the “Manager of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station at Sydney, C.B." [R. Norman Vyoyan]. In full: "I see by the newspapers that Mr Marconi is on his way across the Atlantic, and that he expects to receive messages from his Cape Breton Island Station. If this is so, I should be very glad if you would send him a message on the Atlantic inviting him to visit me in my Cape Breton home." Intersecting folds, some scattered light creases and toning, and a few chips to right edge, otherwise fine condition. Accompanied by a page from Leslie's Weekly for September 2, 1902, containing an account by Everett Wilkes of visits to both Marconi’s station and Bell’s. Provenance; Bonhams 2012.

When 25-year-old Guglielmo Marconi announced the successful wireless transmission of a message across nearly 2200 miles of the Atlantic in December of 1901, Alexander Graham Bell was among the many skeptics. His resistance to the idea no doubt sprung from concern, as Marconi’s experiments, if successful, would prove a direct threat to Bell’s well-established business, reliant upon the expensive cables laid across the ocean floor by his American Telephone and Telegraph Company. But as Marconi boarded the SS Philadelphia in February of 1902 and began an incontrovertible series of tests, receiving and carefully recording transmissions well over 2000 miles of sea, Bell (along with the rest of the world) was swayed and grew increasingly impressed. While working on an experimental dirigible aircraft at his Cape Breton laboratory (aviation had long served as Bell’s second passion, leading to his establishment of the Aerial Experiment Association there five years later), Bell extended this invitation to the young scientist. Though there is no record that Marconi accepted the invitation, the two did share a series of pleasant exchanges—including heartfelt congratulations from Bell on Marconi’s achievement of the first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America just two months later in December of 1902. An extraordinary letter connecting two of the most important figures in the development of modern communications.