.S/A' WILLIAM .SV/-:.J//-;A'.S, /..A-.X 75 



practical use. While these pioneers in the field of telegraphic 

 progress were still contending against practical difficulties, other 

 earnest labourers entered the same field, amongst whom Werner 

 Siemens, Bain, and Breguet should not pass unmentioned here. 

 But so rapid has been the progress of our branch of science, that, 

 while J am obliged to speak of these men as belonging to our 

 early history, they are still, almost without exception, living 

 amongst us in full enjoyment of their faculties, and, I am happy 

 to add, members of our new Society. They have the rare satis- 

 faction to see their early day-dreams carried out upon so vast a 

 scale that there is to-day hardly a country, however remote, that 

 is not within a few minutes', or at all events a few hours' call from 

 every central point of the civilised world, that diplomatic con- 

 ferences have to be held to regulate international telegraphy, and 

 that a proposal is seriously entertained by the leading powers of 

 the earth to place telegraphic property upon the highest, I may 

 almost say a sacred basis, by declaring it inviolable in case of war. 

 The electric telegraph has indeed attained to the dignity of a 

 commercial, a social, and an international institution of the 

 highest importance ; it is a civiliser of the first magnitude, and 

 we may well be proud to meet here together in furtherance of such 

 a cause. 



You will pardon me if I abstain from making special reference 

 to the numerous claims to recognition of the fellow-labourers of 

 the present day whom I am now addressing ; they are well known 

 within our own circle and to the public at large, but neither my 

 ability nor the time at my command would suffice for such a task. 

 I will only endeavour, before concluding this Address, to summarize 

 the subject-matters which, judging from my experience, should 

 engage our principal attention. 



Problems of pure electrical science meet the telegraph engineer 

 at every turn, the methods of testing insulated wire, of deter- 

 mining the position of a fault in a submarine cable under various 

 circumstances, or of combining instruments so as to produce re- 

 corded messages by the mere fluctuation of electrical tension in a 

 long submarine conductor, are problems worthy of the most profound 

 physicist and mathematician. On the other hand, there is hardly 

 a problem in electrical science that is not of practical interest to 

 the Telegraph Engineer ; and, considering that electricity is not 



