Thunderstruck

On June 4, 1894, Professor Oliver Lodge delivers a presentation on the contributions of Heinrich Hertz at the Royal Institution, demonstrating an electromagnetic wave’s conductive power. Lodge is a professor of physics and an ardent believer in theoretical over practical science. He is also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, established to review unexplained phenomena using the scientific lens. The discovery of electromagnetic waves suggests to Lodge that there may be scientific explanations for all manner of occurrences like ghosts, mediums, and speaking with the dead.

According to Erik Larson, Lodge’s fatal flaw is an inability to follow research to its conclusion. After the presentation on electromagnetic waves, Lodge abandons that line of research and turns to studying the occult.

“The Great Hush” is the time before the world became connected, when oceans made communication near impossible. The years ahead of the invention of the wireless were rife with discoveries like the Leyden Jar, the first battery, and the revelation that sparks might be oscillations rather than one-off occurrences and might alter their conductors. Lodge did not believe Hertz’s electromagnetic waves could serve a useful purpose, and many agreed, though they found the science fascinating.

Guglielmo Marconi’s childhood is one of little formal education, his Protestant mother is distrustful of formal education in Italy, which she views as Catholic. His teachers remember Marconi as a weak-minded, somewhat simple boy.

Marconi claims the inspiration for the wireless hit him while he read an obituary for the great Heinrich Hertz, which accompanied a summary of a presentation by Oliver Lodge on Hertzian waves. Marconi instantly understood the next steps in the experiment and intended to use Hertz’s waves to transmit messages.

He spends months in his attic lab, facing setback after failure, which causes him to be thin and pale. He continues, facing each setback with renewed determination and focus, confident that his vision can be realized.

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was raised as a Methodist in a conservative, religious family ruled by the patriarch, Grandfather Philo. Crippen studies homeopathy but does not graduate and departs for work and further education in England, where he lands at St. Mary of Bethlehem, an “asylum for the insane.” After a short stint abroad, he returns to the US and eventually graduates. He meets and marries Charlotte Jane Bell, who gives birth to a healthy boy they name Otto. She dies shortly before giving birth to their second child, and Otto is sent to live with Crippen’s parents while Crippen returns to New York.

Now a widower, Dr. Crippen meets 17-year-old Cora Turner when she comes to the doctor’s office after a miscarriage. She is the mistress of a local merchant who keeps her fed, clothed, and housed in exchange for sexual favors. Her dream is to sing opera on the big stage. Crippen soon falls for Turner, and they wed, only for the young woman to reveal her real name is actually Kunigunde Mackamotzki.

Shortly after their marriage, Cora Crippen undergoes surgery, losing the ability to bear children. Not long afterward, the country slides into economic depression, and the couple is forced to move in with Turner’s stepfather, a humiliation for Crippen.

Scientists Charles Richet and Oliver Lodge conduct experiments on Ile Roubaud that include attempting to commune with the dead via the conduit of a 40-year-old woman named Eusapia Palladino, a famed physical medium. Richet and Lodge feel her conjured spirit touching them, and furniture in the room shakes even as the scientists restrain her legs and arms.

Lodge believes that there are scientific explanations for Palladino’s abilities and pursues an exploration of the ether rather than pursuing the device he built for Hertzian electromagnetic waves.

Marconi continues experimenting in his attic laboratory with the dream of creating a device that utilizes electromagnetic waves for long-distance communication. He discovers that using an antenna allows him to send Morse-coded letters over greater and greater distances, depending on the height of the antenna. Finally, he tests the new design with a hill between himself and the receiver, a gunshot confirming that the message was received on the other end.

Although the medical field suffers during the Great Depression, sales of medications rise as people seek to cure themselves without incurring doctor’s fees. Dr. Crippen applies for a position at Munyon’s Homeopathic Home Remedy and is accepted and allowed rooms above the office. He is well-liked at work, though his employer notes that Crippen’s wife is eager for the attention of men who are not her husband.

Marconi is ready to share his breakthrough and travels with his mother to London, only to have his device broken in customs.

Meanwhile, Crippen does well at Munyon’s and is moved several times to regional offices before Cora Crippen insists on returning to New York without him. Crippen is asked to move to London and is offered an incredible salary. He does so, sadly leaving his wife in New York alone.

Both Marconi and Crippen find themselves in London, the center of the world at the time and a city growingly obsessed with séances and the occult. Britain is in turmoil under an aging queen, and there is talk of war. Women want the vote, while Darwin insists it is not God but evolution that makes mankind Earth’s dominant species.