Thunderstruck

A battle rages through the pages of Thunderstruck that tells the story of how scientific advancement changed over the previous century. Marconi is instrumental in shifting discovery away from the theoretical sciences towards practical-use development. His entrepreneurial mindset did not exist in the late Victorian era. Larson writes: “The closest models for this kind of behavior were unsavory—for example, the men who made fortunes selling whack medicines” (90). And yet, between 1894 and 1920, Marconi would redefine how scientific discovery was undertaken, marking the beginning of a transition from collective theoretical exploration to practical-use, concept-owned research and development led primarily by corporations.

The story begins in Europe in the late 1890s when scientists were dominating the public conversation. Marconi arrives in London to find a city where scientific lecturers draw large crowds to the Royal Institution, a venue Professor Oliver Lodge described as “a sort of sacred place where pure science was enthroned to be worshiped for its own sake” (24). Science, as practiced by professors and lecturers, is respected and revered, and it begins to replace God: “The yawning void of this new ‘Darwinian darkness,’ as one writer put it, caused some to embrace science as their new religion” (72).