{"title":"Tim Wander","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the world of broadcast history with Tim Wander. Explore the evolution of radio and television through insightful research and captivating storytelling. A must-read for media enthusiasts and history buffs alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"marconi-s-hall-street-works-book-tim-wander-9781785076671","title":"Marconi's Hall Street Works","description":"By the end of 1898 Guglielmo Marconi's fledgling new Wireless Telegraph Company was just over two years old. The young Italian engineer was exhausted from endless months of intense testing and developments, trying to prove that his system of wireless communication was a viable commercial proposition. But Marconi had no customers and his company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. However Marconi was no ordinary man. He believed in his system and he believed that the orders would come and that he would need to fulfil them. \u003cp\u003eIn January 1899, in a brave, perhaps even reckless move, he opened the world's first wireless factory in Chelmsford, employing 20 people. For a time his new factory had to scramble for sub-contract manufacture, but over the next 13 years the Hall Street Works engineers, technicians and staff were to build the foundations of a new wireless age.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSoon the Hall Street Works would send equipment to the Boer War, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and supply the huge Poldhu and Clifden transatlantic stations. In December 1901, against all the odds, Marconi managed to receive a wireless message sent across the Atlantic Ocean, over 2,170 miles, and much of the equipment was built in the Hall Street Works. Despite Marconi and his Company becoming world famous it was still a desperate struggle to find paying customers for his new 'wire-less' system. On 8th May 1901 the Royal Navy would place the first order for 32 sets, which was increased to 108 sets by 1905.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Hall Street Works then supplied all the equipment for Marconi's growing network of coastal wireless stations and started to equip increasing numbers of civilian ships. The factory supplied customers across the globe including the Amazon Basin, Hawaii, Congo, Thailand, South Africa, India, Canada and even to both sides in the Balkan War of 1912. It was Marconi wireless equipment manufactured in Hall Street installed aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic that saved over 730 people when the great ship was lost in 1912 and over 760 people when the RMS Lusitania was sunk in May 1915. This successful use of wireless for safety at sea effectively generated a new and vast market for Marconi's equipment.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn the same year the Hall Street Works officially closed its doors as the huge New Street Works took over the workload and the world's first wireless factory fell silent, apart from its wireless station across the road that continued to eavesdrop on the German fleet feeding vital intelligence to the Navy's top secret Room 40 code breakers. It was this and all the work done at Hall Street that ensured that Britain and the Marconi Company were ready to face the extreme demands of a world now at war.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49517693567249,"sku":"GOR010930834","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52755386204433,"sku":"NIN9781785076671","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1785076671.jpg?v=1750930056"},{"product_id":"marconi-on-the-isle-of-wight-book-tim-wander-9780755207206","title":"Marconi on the Isle of Wight","description":"In November 1897, a twenty-three year old Italian inventor visited the Royal Needles Hotel that overlooked Alum Bay on the west coast of the Isle of Wight. The young Guglielmo Marconi's proposal to rent rooms to perform his 'experiments' over the deserted winter months was warmly welcomed by the hotels proprietors. Marconi used some of the working capital of his newly formed Wireless Telegraph \u0026amp; Signal Company to convert the hotel's billiard room and install his equipment and spark transmitter. Several small ships were hired and fitted with wireless aerials and receivers while moored at the pier below. A huge mast, 168 feet high, had to be hauled up the cliff face of Alum Bay and raised in the hotel grounds, a feat that required the help of most of the able bodied men in Totland. On Monday 6th December 1897 Marconi started his wireless experiments from the Royal Needles Hotel, including a month of private demonstrations for Queen Victoria and the Royal family using wireless stations he installed at Osborne House and on board the Royal Yacht. For the next two and a half years the world's first permanent wireless station would be operated from the Isle of Wight. By 1900 Marconi realised he need more space, greater privacy and longer ranges to his new stations being built in Cornwall. He moved his equipment and aerial mast from Alum Bay across the Island to a new station built in Knowles farm in Niton. While there Marconi developed the vital science of tuning, enabling multiple wireless signals to be separated without interference. In January 1901 transmissions from Niton reached Marconi's new station at Lizard Point in Cornwall. This was 196 miles away, a world record for 'radio' waves, convincing Marconi that his system was now ready to attempt to transmit across the Atlantic ocean, over 2,100 miles. The science and art of wireless communication was born on the Isle of Wight. This is the story of a young Italian engineer, whose small experiments on a small Island grew to produce our modern world of instant global communication, radio broadcasting, mobile phones, television, satellite communication and even the internet. Marconi on the Isle of Wight changed the world forever.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543326269713,"sku":"GOR006974271","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51222824747281,"sku":"NIN9780755207206","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0755207203.jpg?v=1751168966"},{"product_id":"from-marconi-to-melba-book-tim-wander-9781789729139","title":"From Marconi to Melba","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49575305773329,"sku":"GOR013071963","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1789729130.jpg?v=1750962851"},{"product_id":"2mt-writtle-the-birth-of-british-broadcasting-book-tim-wander-9780755206070","title":"2mt Writtle - The Birth of British Broadcasting","description":"This book charts the struggle to achieve a national radio broadcasting service in Britain after World War 1. It starts with young wireless engineers struggling to develop radio systems capable of transmitting speech to aircraft during the war. It then follows those same engineers for the next five years, and details their early experimental broadcasts from the Marconi New Street works that included the famous 1920 broadcast by Dame Nellie Melba. The Marconi engineers then created the 2MT Writtle station. Its sparkling success led the same engineers to design and then build the BC, starting in 1923. This then is the story of those amazing times. It is aimed at a wide readership, not just lovers of historic or technical tomes. The book does include separate technical\/historical appendices on the Writtle, Chelmsford and 2LO transmitters, the Dutch station PCG, Belgian station OTL and even the village of Writtle itself. The book also looks at the work of many early pioneers who tried to make broadcasting happen even sooner, including Grindell Matthews, Mahlon Loomis, Reginald Fessenden and David Hughes. It includes an overview of the explosion in radio broadcasting in America along with a detailed Glossary and Appendices on all aspects of the new science of radio. With over 200 photographs, it draws on over 25 years of research and includes much previously unpublished archive material.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49604343234833,"sku":"GOR009757970","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51252550992145,"sku":"NIN9780755206070","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/075520607X.jpg?v=1751075866"},{"product_id":"guglielmo-marconi-book-tim-wander-9781785074813","title":"Guglielmo Marconi","description":"This is the detailed story of Marconi's intense, five year struggle to develop a reliable and practical wireless communication system. It was a constant search for distance and reliability, often in the face of appalling weather. \u003cp\u003eStep by step he overcame countless technical difficulties, battling seemingly insurmountable problems of physics and engineering as his embryonic system began to take shape. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was also a battle for public, press, commercial, military and scientific acceptance. It quickly became a war of money and ideas as Marconi fought against international and state sponsored competitors who deployed every form of industrial espionage and legal challenge. Each was determined to claim a piece of the new science and try to take control of what was becoming a new industrial revolution. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the end it was only Marconi who won through. He had the vision, self belief and force of character to build a working system and prove it under the harshest of climates. In doing so he built a huge company and a whole new industry, straight from the laboratory bench. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut it was a close run thing. Many times during the first five years he nearly lost the race to tame Heinrich Hertz's wireless waves. But what he achieved on bleak windswept cliffs and basement laboratories around Britain's shores changed the world as we know it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736495825169,"sku":"NGR9781785074813","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51050576773393,"sku":"NIN9781785074813","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53245577199889,"sku":"GOR014828285","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53245595648273,"sku":"GOR012971023","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1785074814.jpg?v=1751090921"},{"product_id":"marconi-s-new-street-works-1912-2012-book-tim-wander-9780755206933","title":"Marconi's New Street Works 1912 - 2012","description":"The Marconi New Street works in Chelmsford, Essex was the world's first purpose built wireless factory and became the world's first electronics factory using mass production techniques. For well over ninety years the huge factory was the centre of the massive Marconi Company Empire that stretched across the world. However, the disastrous collapse of the Marconi Company prompted the abandonment of the huge complex of offices, workshops, laboratories, test areas and manufacturing plant that alone once employed over 10,000 people. When the factory was opened in 1912, the S Titanic had just sunk in the middle of the Atlantic and 711 lives were saved solely due to the use of Guglielmo Marconi's invention and the brave Marconi wireless operators aboard. It was the tragedy of the Titanic that gave birth to the modern wireless age and spurred a growth in manufacture and development that probably could not have occurred otherwise. One hundred years later in 2012 the site stands empty and vandalised. This is the story of the world's first wireless factory, partly told in the words of the people who worked there. Within its walls the science and art of wireless communication was born. I also firmly believe that this is where the modern electronics age, be it radio, television, radar, satellite or even mobile telephones was born. The Marconi New Street Works, 1912 - 2012, was the birthplace of Britain's last industrial revolution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50134783525137,"sku":"GOR006555348","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51764855865617,"sku":"GOR006231140","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52739943104785,"sku":"NIN9780755206933","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0755206932.jpg?v=1751295772"},{"product_id":"where-pluto-crossed-the-path-rambles-with-purpose-across-the-isle-of-wight-book-tim-wander-9781789557503","title":"Where Pluto Crossed the Path: Rambles with Purpose Across the Isle of Wight","description":"\u003cp\u003eOperation Pluto - Pipe Lines Under The Ocean - was a highly ambitious engineering project to design, develop and construct undersea pipelines and huge pumping stations. These would pump petroleum fuel under the English Channel to support Operation OVERLORD, the Allied invasion of Normandy commencing on 6th June 1944.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe route that PLUTO took across the Isle of Wight started at the Thorness beach terminal and a pumping station at Whippance Farm. Then over 14 miles it stretched across the Island, looping around Parkhurst Forest and Newport to eventually arrive at a huge storage tank hidden in Hungerberry Wood above Shanklin. From there pipes fed two pumping stations, one housed around a derelict hotel in Shanklin, the other in a part demolished Victorian fort and a golf clubhouse at Sandown. From there, 72 miles away in Europe, the Allied forces desperately needed fuel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToday, 75 years on, the route of the pipeline and the buildings associated with PLUTO have all but disappeared. But if you look closely, there still are tantalising clues spread across the Island. I thoroughly enjoy walking for its own sake, but it is sometimes nice to have a purpose, if not an excuse. So this book offers the reader 25 guided walks and detailed maps to find what still survives of the great pipeline and the pumping stations; and in doing so to plot its course. Wherever PLUTO crossed the path there was usually a unique marker. They are still out there, waiting to be discovered.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe whole PLUTO project was massive undertaking. It was rapid, rushed and at times improvised. It was also at the very cutting edge of what was possible. It was always Top Secret.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the end, PLUTO was not the success that saved the Allied invasion, and in truth, it was probably a 'pipeline too far'. Immediately after the war a propaganda campaign actively sought to justify the huge expenditure of man hours and resources just before the invasion and D-Day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut none of this should detract from our admiration for the magnificent operation and the men and women who gave their all to make it happen. It came tantalizingly close to fully supporting the Allies victory, but was ultimately beaten by the vagaries of war.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis then is the real story of PLUTO. A Ramble with a Purpose.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51051072258321,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51051076616465,"sku":"NIN9781789557503","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/178955750X.jpg?v=1750723720"},{"product_id":"culver-cliff-and-the-isle-of-wight-at-war-book-tim-wander-9781789551648","title":"Culver Cliff and the Isle of Wight at War","description":"\u003cp\u003eDefending the Realm - The Electronic Warfare Battle on Culver Cliff during WW2\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDuring most of the Second World War the Isle of Wight was essentially a closed military camp supporting over 30 anti-aircraft batteries to protect Southampton and Portsmouth dockyards and an arsenal of coastal firepower to defend the Solent and the Island from Invasion.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIt was a perilous time when the fate of the nation hung in the balance and the Isle of Wight was the new front line. 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