Erik Larson’s “Thunderstruck” is one of the more enjoyable reads I’ve had in a while.  It blends chronicling Guglielmo Marconi’s development of wireless telegraphy with a real London murder, and the eventual role Marconi’s technology plays in catching the killer.

I was pretty sure I would like this book after reading Larson’s “Devil in the White City” and “In the Garden of Beasts.”  If you like exhaustively researched history presented in a really accessible way, definitely don’t hesitate to dive into this one.

The remarkable thing about Marconi is that while he was an obsessive scientist in terms of testing to come to conclusions about what works, he was incredibly ignorant of the actual scientific concepts underlying his work.  At one point he is trying to send trans-Atlantic signals, and when his station in England is damaged he has his crew rebuild.

“At his direction, the men at Poldhu erected two new masts, each 160 feet tall, and strung thick cable across the top.  From it they hung fifty-four bare copper wires, each 150 feet long, that converged over the condenser house and formed a giant fanshell in the sky.  No particular law of physics dictated the design.  It just struck Marconi as right.”

That was his approach to everything.  An important part of his system was a piece of glass with metal shavings inside called a condenser.  He struck upon the right makeup of the shavings by basically grabbing a ton of different metals and making tubes with different combinations, again and again and again and again, until he found what seemed like the best one.

That research happened after the Italian went to England with his mother, who interestingly enough was a member of the Jameson family, the Irish whiskey one.  In fact, Larson writes, when the two arrived in London, Marconi’s cousin Henry Jameson Davis was the one who met them there.

This book has so many interesting tidbits it is not even remotely worth going through more of them.  Just read it!  Though I will mention that the detective involved with investigating the murder is named Dew, and the medical examiner in the case is Dr. Pepper.  So clearly this was a good book for me.

Though one of those tidbits does play into one of my strongest college memories.  Marconi had a heart attack in 1937 and died.  Larson writes that the first outsider to arrive at his bedside was Mussolini.  Yes, that one.

I first learned about Marconi as a freshman in college when I took a course called Introduction to Broadcasting.  It was largely a history course taught by a professor who himself was a character.  During our lecture on Marconi, someone in the class raised their hand and ask how Marconi had died.  The professor looked out at the class for what felt like five minutes but was probably five seconds.

“He just died….OF STRESS,” he replied.

That happened 15 years ago and I honestly still think about it all the time.

During my junior and senior years I lived with a few guys who were also in that class.  My friend Jason played guitar, and at one point, I’m not sure how it started, we became involved in writing a parody song about the professor to the tune of Better Than Ezra’s “Good.”

Do you have a piece of a song that you randomly sing from time to time?  This is one of mine.  The song rests on the premise of the professor needing some help from a secretary, who is nowhere to be found.

So if you ever hear me say, “Maybe he/she died of stress, he/she just died,” thank the guy whose work paved the way for radio.