SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 67 



by several members or associates, and if the council sees no 

 grounds for disqualification the candidates so proposed will be 

 balloted for at the first ordinary meeting of the society. It is 

 the duty of the council to transfer those associates who are duly 

 qualified, according to the provisions of paragraph 2, into the 

 class of members. 



As regards accession of members, we have eveiy reason to be 

 satisfied with the first fruits of our labour. Our actual list of 

 members contains already 110 names, without counting the class of 

 foreign members, regarding which I shall have to make a special 

 communication, and without counting the candidates for election, 

 which you will be asked to admit by ballot this evening. I. am 

 happy to be able to point in our list of members to the historic 

 names of Wheatstone, Cooke, and Morse, to the distinguished 

 names of Thomson, Tyndall, and others scarcely less renowned for 

 their important contributions to electrical science. Other well- 

 known names will shortly appear in our next list of foreign and 

 resident members. The support of the two great telegraph ad- 

 ministrations of Great Britain and India is secure to us through 

 the accession of the directors-general and the chief engineers 

 connected with those systems. The military branch of telegraph 

 engineering is very fully represented by the distinguished chemist 

 and engineer officers charged with those departments. As regards 

 professional telegraph engineers the list includes an array of names 

 many of which will ever remain associated with important im- 

 provements and generally with early telegraphic enterprise by sea 

 and by land. The list of associate members includes names of 

 promise and administrative ability, but it is as yet far too short for 

 the wellbeing and the useful action of the society. The aspirant 

 telegraph engineer, the superintendent of a station, and others 

 employed in the service, will find the Society of Telegraph 

 Engineers, with its transactions, a useful source of technical 

 information, and productive of excellent opportunities of meeting 

 those who through personal acquaintance may forward their 

 interests as well as extend their knowledge. 



The council have refrained from conferring honorary member- 

 ships, because they feel that the young society has to establish its 

 own worth before it can pretend to bestow such honorary distinc- 



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