Electrical World and Engineer, December 2, 1899, pages 870-871:
A Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company for America.
Articles of incorporation have been filed with the Secretary of State at Trenton, N. J., for a corporation with an authorized capital of $10,000,000. This company is to be known as the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. One-half the authorized capital is preferred stock, with 8 per cent. non-cumulative dividend.
Arrangements have already been made for the purchase of the Marconi patents and the acquiring of rights to operate in all the American possessions and in Cuba. The company is empowered to operate over land and sea. The incorporators are Guglielmo Marconi, London; Isaac L. Rice, August Belmont and Clement A. Griscom, New York, and Robert Goodbody, Paterson, N. J.
Mr. Isaac L. Rice, who is to be president of the new company, states that the factories and headquarters will be established in New York.
"We shall be in active operation just as soon as it is possible to find suitable quarters and build the machinery. Special attention will be given to the manufacture of wireless instruments with which to equip ships that they may communicate at sea. There will be large orders for establishing communication between points where it is not practicable to maintain cables. We expect to equip the signal and life-saving stations along the coast with the wireless system, that they may warn approaching vessels in time of fog or storm. The uses to which the wireless system may be put are almost unlimited. There is an immense field before us, and the system is as yet in its infancy. We shall have no interest in the contract that was recently made to connect five of the Hawaiian Islands by wireless telegraphy. That was entered into before our company was fully organized. We shall control all other rights in Hawaii, however, as well as in all the American possessions and Cuba."
August Belmont is to be treasurer of the company, and Mr. Rice is now taking active steps to organize his forces for the development of the company. Just how much Mr. Marconi is to get for his system here is not known, but it is authoritatively stated that in England after refusing £10,000 from the government he got £17,000 from the English company and £50,000 in £1 shares which afterwards rose in value to £8.
A special despatch from London of Nov. 25 says: Wireless telegraphy, Marconi's system, has finally been introduced into the navy as a branch study. The old hulk Hector, lying at Portsmouth, has been fitted out as a school of instruction, and signalmen from her will be attached to the battleship Canopus, which goes to the Mediterranean in December, taking Marconi instruments as part of her regular equipment. She will be the first British ship to do this.
From Washington a special despatch of Nov. 24 says: The War Department is quietly at work on the problem of wireless telegraphy for the signal service. The Signal Corps has been handicapped recently both by lack of funds and officers to experiment on an extensive scale, but Capt. S. Reber, at Governors Island, N. Y., is carrying on a series of experiments between that point and Tompkinsville with a view to adapting the army apparatus for communication between fortified points and in any other locations where the wireless system might prove superior in practice to the older form of telegraphy. The army is not dependent on Marconi for instruments, having developed a system of its own, and the work will be pushed with vigor when Congress furnishes the necessary means.
It may be noted that suit has been brought against Mr. Marconi in the United States Circuit Court by Lyman C. Larned, of Boston, for infringement of the patent granted Oct. 5, 1886, to Prof. A. S. Dolbear, of Tufts College. Betts, Betts, Sheffield & Betts and E. H. Moreau are the attorneys for the respondent, and Henry A. Prince for Mr. Larned. The bill of complaint was filed in the United States Circuit Court, Oct. 5 last. The suit is spoken of with contempt by Mr. Marconi's representatives in the new company.