December 2, 1920] 



NATURE 



447 



Notes. 



A I'LEASANT surprise was experienced by those who 

 attended the meeting of the Wireless Section of the 

 Institution of Electrical Engineers on November 24 

 in meeting Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the veteran 

 inventor of the telephone, who had been on a visit to 

 England and to his old home in Scotland, but is now 

 on the way to his adopted home in the United States. 

 Dr. Bell, who stated that his connection with tele- 

 phone matters had ceased some thirty years ago, 

 expressed his pleasure at meeting that section of the 

 electrical world which represented the future perhaps 

 more than any other, and referred to the remarkable 

 developments that were being made in wireless tele- 

 phonv, in which the telephone had gone far beyond 

 his most sanguine conceptions of its possibilities. 

 The Thnex reports an interesting account given at a 

 later interview by Dr. Bell of his researches which 

 led up to the invention of the telephone forty-five 

 \ears ago. Dr. Boll had long been interested in the 

 mechanism of speech, and in reading of the researches 

 of Helmholtz on the nature of vowel sounds, in a 

 l.tnguage with which he was unfamiliar, he had at 

 first wrongly concluded that Helmholtz had trans- 

 mitted such sounds by electrical means. .Mthough he 

 ~oon discovered his mistake, the idea that a trans- 

 mission of this kind should be possible remained in 

 his mind, and came to fruition later when he com- 

 bined two separate lines of research which he had 

 been prosecuting on multiple telegraphy by currents 

 of different frequencies and on recording sound-waves 

 for the benefit of the deaf, and thus arrived at the 

 production and application of an undulating current 

 representing the sound-waves of speech. The freedom 

 of his native city of Edinburgh was conferred upon 

 I )r. Bi II on Tuesday, November .^o. 



Pko \\ II F.cci.Es, chairman of the Wireless 

 Si-ction of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, in 

 his inaugural address at the meeting referred to 

 ;ibove, gave a masterly review of the progress of 

 research during and since the war on the thermionic 

 valve tube, which originated out of the Fleming 

 oscill.-ition valve, and had become, in its three-electrode 

 or " triode " form, the basis of all modern wireless 

 telegraphy. He reviewed some of the interesting 

 |)ap<Ts which had already described the intensivr 

 devi-lopment of the subject under the stimulus of war, 

 liut not the least interesting part of his address was 

 his account of some of his own extensive researches 

 in the investigation of the interdependence of the 

 I urrents and voltages in the various circuits con- 

 rifcled to the grid, an<xle, and filament of the tube, 

 with a view to greater certainty in the design of such 

 tube<» to fill the conditions required with a maximum 

 of efficiency. Owing to the number of variables 

 involved, he had extended his treatment from the 

 ordinary plotting of curves in two dimensions to the 

 manufacture of a series of clay models of surfaces 

 in three dimensions, which should Ix" of very great 

 val^e in elucidating the properties of these tubes. 

 Other scientific questions raised by phenomena met 

 with in wireless telegraphy which Prof. Eccles dealt 

 »-o ^'Vifi. VOL. 106] 



with included the diurnal variations in the ionisation 

 of the upper layers of the atmosphere, which he ^ug- 

 gested might possibly account for certain remarkable 

 discrepancies in the results of wireless direction- 

 finding apparatus at particular times in the day by 

 causing a rotation of the plane of polarisation of 

 the received waves. 



.\t the opening meeting of the Rontgen Society, 

 held qn November 18 at University College, it was 

 announced that the first award of the Mackenzie 

 Davidson medal had been made to Dr. F. W. .\ston. 

 The award, which was instituted to perpetuate the 

 memory of the late Sir J. Mackenzie Davidson, is 

 made by the council of the society for the most note- 

 worthy contribution to its meetings during the session 

 on some subject bearing upon radiology. Dr. .\ston's 

 paper was read on June i, and appears in the current 

 issue of the Journal of the society under the title 

 •' Positive Rays." It deals with the remarkable series 

 of isotopes among non-radio-active substances, which 

 Dr. Aston has been investigating for several years. 



Thb twenty-sixth annual congress of the Royal 

 Institute of Public Health, which will be of an inter- 

 national character, will be held next year in Geneva, 

 on the invitation of the University, from Tuesday, 

 May 10, to Monday, May 16, inclusive. Further 

 particulars can be obtained from the Secretary, 

 37 Russell Square, W.C.i. 



The British Silk Research Association has been 

 approv(xJ by the Department of Scientific and Indus- 

 trial Research as complying with the conditions laid 

 down in the Government scheme for the encourage- 

 ment of industrial research. The secretary of this 

 association is Mr. A. B. Ball, Silk .Association of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, Inc., Kingsway House, 

 Kingsway, VV.C.2. 



The Government of the Czecho-Slovak Republic 

 has established, under the Ministry of Education, a 

 Weather Bureau in Prague, to do for that country 

 the work formerly done at the meteorological central 

 stations of Vienna and Budapest. The new bureau 

 will extend the meteorological service formerly con- 

 ducted in connection with the K. k. Sternwarte, Prag- 

 Kloincntinum (Astronomical Observatory). The direc- 

 tor. Dr. Rudolf Schneider, is anxious to receive for 

 the library of the bureau all tlie reports of observa- 

 tions and meteorological publications formerly sent to 

 the Sternwarte, and he will be glad to send to other 

 meteorological stations and offices publications of his 

 bureau in exchange. 



For some time past the National Union of Scientific 

 Workers, the Institute of Chemistry, and the British 

 .\ssociation of Chemists have had under consideration 

 the matter of income-tax assessment of scientific 

 workers. After several discussions it was agreed 

 unaniinously to prepare a memorial to the Lords of 

 the Treasury setting out under six distinct headings 

 .•1 claim for abatements. The memorial was forwarded 

 i<> scientific societies and to research and technical 



