Victorian hackers and tech bros

Matthew Howard looking pleased with himself, with Francis Giordanella in the background

At our November meeting we were lucky enough to have a talk by a guest speaker, Denholm Knowles, whose subject was a fascinating tale from the turn of the century about which he has just published a book, "Freaks of the Wireless". A story reminiscent of The Prestige, it concerns a feud between Guglielmo Marconi, the "Father of Radio", and Nevil Maskelyne. Best known as a stage magician, at a time when stage magic was huge and practitioners used state-of-the-art technology to achieve their illusions, Maskelyne was also an inventor (creating various locks and a kind of proportionally spaced typewriter) with an interest in radio. Slighted by being cut out of a deal, Maskelyne used his knowledge to exact revenge by jamming Marconi's radio signals when he was trying to put on demonstrations. The spat escalated to a public war of words that was doomed to end in tears. You can glean the whole story by watching the video of the talk on our YouTube channel at youtu.be/8OXyMNEZDtc. (Apologies for the odd format: we weren't able to use our usual projector and large screen, so ended up using the pub's TV screen, which is in a fixed position high on the wall.)

For the full story, read Denholm's book, published by Security Blend Books.

You can see more photos from the evening at www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720330640830.