XX ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



There are few achivements of modern times so great, and few enter- 

 prises which have been carried to successful completion against the per- 

 sistent opposition of such powerful competitors, the smouldering 

 hostility of powerful officials and the steady inertia of powerful 

 Governments. 



17. Wireless Telegraphy. 



The success of Mr. Marconi's attempts to send signals across the 

 Atlantic Ocean without wires is especially interesting to Canada, be- 

 cause, when he was forbidden to conclude his experiments on the 

 shores of Newfoundland, our Government, not being bound, as was 

 cur sister colony, by an unexpired exclusive charter, gave a warm wel- 

 come and gracious support to tJie inventor and projector. It was 

 iiideed the first among governments to make a considerable appropria- 

 tion in aid of what was, at the time, experimental science. The dis- 

 turbance in space needed to produce effects ,at a distance must increase 

 with the mileage between transmitting and receiving stations, but 

 the sending of news despatches from America to the London Times 

 is a promise of further extension, and we must hope that neither the 

 cost of generating the necessary power nor a confusing effect when 

 frequent wireless messages are crossing each other will interfere with 

 the development of a system so scientifically interesting. The utility 

 of wireless telegraphy in connection with lighthouse service and isolated 

 stations is now fully established, while no steamship on the océan 

 need ever be out of touch with one or other shore. The value to 

 meteorological science of regular and complete data from the mid- 

 Atlantic, applied to weather predictions for Europe and to storm warn- 

 ings from America for west-bound vessels, will be high. 



While it may, or may not, be true that, in cases of transmission 

 over great distances, improvements are yet required in receiving cur- 

 rents feeble from dispersion, we may hope that all such difficulties 

 will disappear before the advancing march of science. 



18. The Transmission and Transformation of Energy. 



The wonderful advances of recent years in the transformation 

 and transmission of energy bid fair to place Canada in the front rank 

 of manufacturing countries. The St. Lawrence is a northern river 

 and its valley cuts transversely to the heart of the continent across 

 its axis. Nine-tenths of the water flowing through it comes in from 

 a plateau about one thousand feet above the river level, extending 

 from Labrador to the height of land between Lake Superior and the 

 Lake of the Woods. The millions of horse powers which for 



