62 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



upstairs into the ladies' gallery and shook Mrs. Bose by 

 both hands, with glowing congratulations on her husband's 

 brilliant work. Moreover, the general press and the public 

 were struck by him as the first Indian to win distinction 

 through investigation in science in the most strictly 

 Western of all its departments, and at that time also the 

 most progressive. 



The preceding generation had handed on many recol- 

 lections of the achievements of applied physics, beginning 

 with the laying of the first transatlantic cable, which 

 had brought Sir William Thomson (afterwards Lord 

 Kelvin) into fame, after which came successive marvels, 

 such as electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, 

 Rontgen rays, and more. Now a new marvel was silently 

 preparing to break upon the world the application 

 of Hertz's waves to wireless telegraphy, towards which 

 Hertz seemed to have some premonition and various later 

 investigators were feeling their way, as notably Lodge, 

 and above all Marconi. Bose himself had as early as 

 1895, in a public lecture in Calcutta, demonstrated the 

 ability of the electric rays to travel from the lecture- 

 room, and through an intervening room and passage, to a 

 third room 75 feet distant from the radiator, thus passing 

 through three solid walls on the way, as well as the body of 

 the chairman (who happened to be the Lieutenant- Governor). 

 The receiver at this distance still had energy enough to make 

 a contact which set a bell ringing, discharged a pistol, and 

 exploded a miniature mine. To get this result from his small 

 radiator, Bose set up an apparatus which curiously antici- 

 pated the lofty ' antennae ' of modern wireless telegraphy 

 a circular metal plate at the top of a 20-foot pole being 

 put in connection with the radiator and a similar one with 

 the receiving apparatus. Encouraged by this success, our 

 inventor not only went on signalling through the College 

 but planned to fix one of these poles on the roof of his house 

 and the other on the Presidency College a mile away ; but 

 he left for England before effecting this. 



