It would seem at first glance that the Europeans, like Hertz, were better scientists, and the Americans, like Edison, better tinkerers. In fact, a review of two publications readily available to American electricians, the American Journal of Science and Scientific American, for the years 1865-1895 reveals a paucity of articles on Maxwell and Hertz, even when the German scientist's work appeared in English translation in 1893. The work of both men, however, was cited in many articles on electrical investigations. A notable example is the continuing series of articles by John Trowbridge and his colleagues at Harvard with commentary on the etheric force, Maxwell's equations, electrical oscillations, and the properties of electromagnetic waves (Trowbridge, 1875, 1880, 1891 b, 1894; Trowbridge and Duane, 1895a, 1895b; Trowbridge and Sabine, 1890).

Throughout, the authors evidence both an understanding of the mathematical and scientific principles and a fluency in German. Trowbridge also served as an editor of the Annual of Scientific Discovery and the American Journal of Science. Dolbear's body of work, although not as large, included numerous articles in Scientific American, Nature, the Journal of the Franklin Institute, and other scientific publications, as well as several books on general physics notable for their lucidity (Dolbear, 1892, 1897a, 1897b; Telegraphing without wires, 1895). He held advanced degrees in physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. It would be fair to say that some American electricians, of the Edison or Stubblefield variety, were not aware of the Maxwell-Hertz progress toward wireless, but it is unlikely that these efforts were unknown to electricians like Trowbridge, Tesla, and Dolbear. Like most of their counterparts in Europe during the 80s and 90s, these Americans attributed little importance to the Hertz experiments or to Branly's coherer because they were preoccupied with conduction and induction technologies that worked. The challenge was to make them work better.

The second idea, the scarcity of a ready market in America, makes somewhat more sense, especially in light of Edison's experience with his "grasshopper telegraph." The United States in the late 19th century was more interested in internal expansion, both geographic and economic, than in building an empire and becoming a world power. To that end, the communication system provided by the transcontinental railroad, the telegraph, and the emerging telephone network, seemed adequate until the very end of the century when naval power emerged as an important political goal. But Marconi failed to sell his idea in Italy, and Popoff found no takers in Russia. Only in Great Britain, an island nation with considerable investment in naval superiority and colonies around the world, did long-distance wireless communication have more immediate value. Perhaps the British were better prepared to exploit wireless and may very well have found a "Marconi" had not the genuine article come along. But perhaps not. Remember that the eminent members of the Royal Society spurned Hughes's ideas. So as a generality, this hypothesis of a better market for wireless fails to answer the question for Europe as a whole.

It is tempting to attribute significance to the power of coincidence. Some people, Maxwell, Hertz, and Marconi among them, seem to be the right persons with the right information at precisely the right time. But this simplistic concept fails to account for individual ingenuity. Both Branly and Righi had the same pieces to the puzzle prior to Marconi, and Lodge actually put them together. Yet none of these men invented and marketed wireless successfully.

The solution lies instead in the character of the innovator, that combination of intellect, interest, and effort, and in the diffusion process itself. Marconi, Hertz, and Maxwell all succeeded because they had the right idea and the pursuit thereof constituted their sole activity. Marconi had the additional benefits of a bankroll and a mentor -- Sir William Preece--something other inventors on both continents lacked. Although Preece had failed to solve the wireless puzzle himself, he realized that the young Italian had. He saw the value of this discovery to Great Britain, perhaps with the idea of forestalling its development in Germany which was rapidly emerging as a military power on both land and sea. In a diffusion of innovations scheme, Preece was importaht both as an innovator and an early adopter, and his role in the development of wireless deserves reexamination in this context.

Marconi was, moreover, the first innovative wireless electrician of a new generation, one which would include de Forest, Fessenden, and Armstrong. For these inventors, all born in the last third of the 19th century, Hertz's work was as fresh as that of Steinhill, Morse, Faraday, and Henry was for the previous generation. The younger electricians did not share their elder's preoccupation with the dead-end conduction and induction technologies. After all, invention is, to paraphrase Edison, picking up where the other fellow left off.

By contrast, consider the Americans who were most likely to develop wireless. For various reasons, the pursuit of wireless was not first and foremost in their lives.

Edison was most interested in keeping his Menlo Park laboratory going while trying to electrify New York City, often a daunting financial task. By the mid-80s, revenues from the electric light and phonograph had peaked, and the end of his patent protection on those devices was in sight. He abandoned his experiments in wireless and other inventions to pursue ones, like the improved phonograph and the kinetoscope, which promised more rapid cash flow improvement (Millard, 1990, 54-62).

Bell had always been faced with the sad irony that his beloved wife Mabel had never experienced the marvel of the telephone, his greatest achievement, because she was deaf. It was partly with her in mind that he abandoned his work in telephony altogether and returned to his original career as a teacher of the deaf. He also engaged in experiments of a more visual and participatory nature, such as with flying machines, which she could enjoy with him (Rhodes, 1974, 45-47).

For John Trowbridge, a lifelong goal was to establish a world-class physics laboratory at Harvard, his alma mater (Hall, 1931). This was his chief activity during his career there, and he single-handedly pushed this project through to its completion over three decades. He also was concerned with improving science education in the United States and to that end published basic high school physics texts (Trowbridge, 1884, 1886), a biography of Morse (1901), and several pieces of juvenile fiction in which the heroes were boys interested in science and technology (1891a, 1908). His experiments in wireless were in part a promotion of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory, as well as basic research and a learning experience for his students. But in and of themselves, these experiments were by no means his primary interest.

Likewise, the peripatetic Professor Dolbear, "Old Dolly" to his students, was first and foremost an academic. Orphaned at nine, Dolbear had experienced a difficult and lonely early life. He found his calling as a teacher, like Lodge, and grew quite cozy at Tufts (Dolbear, 1963, 104-121, 200-218). His wireless experiments, wireless and electrostatic telephone patents (Dolbear, 1886a-b), as well as his interest in gyroscopes, magic lantern projectors, tuning forks, organ pipes, and incandescent light, were indicative of his innovative potential. But these were all means to the end of increasing the sum of basic knowledge about physics and communicating it better to his students (Hawks, 1927, 129-130). Throughout his life, Dolbear made minimal attempt to profit from his many inventions and is thus more obscure than he ought to be. And of course, knowledgeable as they were, neither he nor Trowbridge attempted any wireless experiments similar to Marconi's.

Nikola Tesla probably came the closest to forestalling Marconi. But like so many of his experiments, Tesla's foray into wireless never got very far beyond the idea stage, and there is no evidence that he used his invention to transmit and receive telegraph or telephone messages, or to broadcast to a wider audience. His interest in radio was incidental and secondary to his dream of transmitting electrical power without wires so that appliances, motors, and other electrical devices would operate anywhere by induction or atmospheric conduction ( Tesla, 1900, 5). Tesla's advocates would say that he was the unappreciated genius of the age who invented everything from x-rays to radar to lasers, and discovered cosmic rays and atomic theory along the way. His detractors, however, would call him an egotistical and eccentric scientist who gained fame and fortune early in life, proposed many bizarre pseudo-scientific schemes, and died having accomplished very little ( Johnson, 1994, 367373). The truth probably lies somewhere in between

Now, a hundred years later, digital technology appears certain to replace analog radio and television which have been in use for most of this century. But as recently as 1988, the Federal Communication Commission received 23 proposals for advanced television standards, all analog. Next year, one digital standard will remain for television, and soon the same will be true of radio. Then the analog systems, like conduction and induction wireless at the emergence of Marconi's system a century ago, will lapse rapidly into obsolescence. One major difference is that these digital innovations are all the products of faceless corporations, not individual human beings with goals, desires, personal lives, and characters. The creation of this technology will be analyzed in the context of corporate culture, organizational climate, and other inhuman attributes. Future historians are unlikely to have as much fun investigating these activities.

But before relegating analog radio and television to the scrap heap of technological obscurity, consider this. With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, many products which have been on the market to serve the hearing-impaired population in public buildings such as auditoriums, museums, and libraries are receiving renewed interest.

One of these is a large coil of wire mounted in the ceiling through which an audio signal is transmitted. Any person wearing a hearing aid with a passive coil for telephone reception can hear by a marvelous technology called electromagnetic induction. What would Alexander Graham and Mabel Hubbard Bell think about this innovation?