Wireless’s “Critical Flaw”: The Marconi Company, Corporation Mentalities, and the Broadcasting Option

Abstract

This article has a double aim: one empirical–historical and one theoretical. First, it analyzes how the idea of an “alternative” use of wireless (namely, broadcasting) emerged and was debated inside the British Marconi Company in the first two decades of the 20th century. This historical part, based on unpublished sources preserved in the Marconi Archives, shows that this idea was (rationally) opposed by the majority of company’s management. Second, this article aims to place private companies at the center of media historiography, and more in general media studies, through a multifocal approach.