The Wireless Telegraph 



sicists who studied it in its original form was Dr. 

 Oliver J. Lodge. He improved it so much that, 

 in 1894, at the Royal Institution in London, he 

 was able to show it as an electric eye that regis- 

 tered the impact of invisible rays at a distance of 

 more than forty yards. He made bold to say 

 that this distance might be raised to half a mile. 

 As early as 1879 Professor D. E. Hughes began 

 a series of experiments in wireless telegraphy, 

 on much the lines which in other hands have now 

 reached commercial as well as scientific success. 

 Professor Hughes was the inventor of the micro- 

 phone, and that instrument, he declared, affords 

 an unrivalled means of receiving wireless mes- 

 sages, since it requires no tapping to restore its 

 non-conductivity. In his researches this in- 

 vestigator was convinced that his signals were 

 propagated, not by electromagnetic induction, 

 but by aerial electric waves spreading out from 

 an electric spark, Early in 1880 he showed his 

 apparatus to Professor Stokes, who observed its 

 operation carefully. His dictum was that he 

 saw nothing which could not be explained by 

 known electromagnetic effects. This erroneous 

 judgment so discouraged Professor Hughes that 

 he desisted from following up his experiments, 

 and thus, in all probability, the birth of the 

 wireless telegraph was for several years delayed.* 



*" History of the Wireless Telegraph," by J. J. Fahie. 

 Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood & Sons; New 

 York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1899. This work is full of interest- 

 ing detail, well illustrated. 



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