OcTOBER 30, 1913| 
—_ 
COMMITTEES ON RADIO-TELEGRAPHIC 
INVESTIGATIONS. 
Organisation of an International Commission. 
MEETING was held in Brussels at the com- 
mencement of last month at which the question 
of organising an international commission to carry 
out wireless experiments was further discussed. At 
the International Time Conference in Paris last Octo- 
ber a series of resolutions was passed with reference 
to the formation of an international organisation for 
the scientific study of Hertzian waves and their rela- 
tionship to the medium through which they travel. 
At this conference Mr. Goldschmidt, of Brussels, 
placed his high-power station at Brussels and the 
sum of toool. for preliminary studies at the disposal 
of the proposed international commission. J 
Arising out of these resolutions the representatives 
of the different countries who were present at Brussels 
last month drafted a provisional constitution for the 
international commission and a scheme for its work. 
The objects of the commission are :—(1) To carry 
out experiments on the propagation of electric waves. 
(2) To make wireless telegraph measurements and the 
study of the problems related therto. 
The provisional programme of the work of the com- 
mission will consist in making measurements in 
different countries and at different distances and in 
different directions of the strength of signals sent out 
from the station at Brussels. These measurements 
will be repeated from day to day or hour to hour as 
necessary in order to determine the variation of the 
strength of the signals both with time, with distance, 
and with direction, and later the effect of wave-length 
and decrement will be studied. 
It is proposed to set up a receiving station near 
the transmitting station in Brussels in order accu- 
rately to control the strength of the waves sent out so 
that an allowance can be made for any unavoidable 
variation in reducing the final results. 
The organisation consists of a number of national 
committees, one in each of the countries taking part. 
The national committees will send delegates to the 
international commission, and these delegates, to- 
gether with the officers, will constitute the inter- 
national commission. It is proposed that the inter- 
national commission should meet once a year, or more 
often if the work is sufficiently advanced. 
The Institution of Electrical Engineers has decided 
to undertake the formation of the national committee 
for Great Britain, under the scheme for the organisa- 
tion and encouragement of electrical research which 
was announced at the institution meeting on Decem- 
ber 12, 1912. 
The British Association Committee. 
The British Association Committee has now in- 
augurated an extensive scheme for the making of 
observations of natural electric waves by means of 
wireless telegraph receiving apparatus, and is address- 
ing to wireless telegraph experimenters an invitation 
to cooperate in the making of observations. The 
records will be collected by the committee and com- 
pared and reduced by it. 
These natural electric wave trains produce trouble- 
some noises in the telephone receivers of wireless 
telegraph stations. Some proportion of them are due 
to lightning strokes within a few hundred miles of 
the receiving station; but even when there is no 
thunder weather recorded over the whole continent of 
Europe and the adjacent seas, they are received con- 
tinuously by an antenna adjusted to a great wave- 
length. It has been suggested that some of these 
wave trains may be due to extraterrestrial causes, 
and it does not seen unreasonable to suppose that 
NO. 2296, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
277 
electrical discharges may occur in the sun and may 
be the source of a proportion of the natural electric 
wave trains we receive. There is little likelihood of 
our gaining a knowledge of the causes at work until 
organised observations are carried out simultaneously 
at numerous points of the globe and collated at a 
single centre, such as the committee now affords. 
Another and distinct inquiry which urgently needs 
pursuing is the action of the earth’s atmosphere in 
causing variations of the electric waves used in trans- 
mitting messages over long distances. The laws of 
these variations, especially in respect of their con- 
nection with weather conditions, with position on the 
earth’s surface, and with the time of day would, if 
unravelled, probably throw light on the electrical 
conditions of the highest parts of our atmosphere. 
The committee has undertaken this inquiry also. 
In carrying on the work the committee looks very 
largely to private experimenters for the collection of 
data. But it has been a matter of extreme gratifica- 
tion to find that the Imperial Navy and the British 
Post Office were willing to help. The Marconi Com- 
pany also has, with commendable public spirit, pro- 
mised to give its powerful assistance to the com- 
mittee. Thus the committee can already make sure 
that data will be collected on its behalf in all parts 
of the world. Meanwhile private experimenters who 
are willing to assist the committee by making observa- 
tions should communicate with the secretary, Dr. W. 
Eccles, University College, Gower Street, London, 
England. 
APPLIED SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF SHEFFIELD. 
Gy" October 25 the completed buildings of the 
applied science department of Sheffield Univer. 
sity were opened by Lord Haldane. These buildings 
have the largest frontage in Sheffield, being 350 ft. 
long, the architecture being of the Hampton Court 
Palace type. The cost of the additions has been 
approximately 45,000]. The central administrative 
block contains a very fine assembly-room, called the 
‘““Mappin Hall,’ after the late Sir Frederick Thorpe 
Mappin, first chairman of the applied science com- 
mittee of Sheffield University, and a handsome de- 
partmental library which will house books having 
reference to applied science and pure science data 
more immediately bearing upon this subject. There 
are staff common-rooms, and the metallurgical record 
office included in this central block, and the depart- 
ment of pure geology is also housed here. 
The south-east wing, a considerable portion of the 
cost of which was defrayed by the Drapers’ Company 
of London, contains four floors; the two lower floors 
are devoted to non-ferrous metallurgy, the third floor 
to mining, and the fourth floor to applied chemistry 
which has particular reference to mining. The new 
non-ferrous department, which has been organised so 
as not in any way to overlap the metallurgy of the 
Royal School of Mines, has been designed to develop 
scientifically the silver industries of Sheffield. The 
course here is divided into two sections: first, the 
basis metal section, in which are produced on a works’ 
scale ingots of German silver, Britannia metal, brass, 
and bronze, white metals, and other non-ferrous 
metals in use in Sheffield manufactures (for working 
these metals into the finished articles, the department 
has secured the friendly cooperation of silver manu- 
facturers in Sheffield); secondly, the electroplating 
department, in which all classes of plating operations 
are carried on on a manufacturing scale. Each 
student’s bench is fitted with a specially combined 
ammeter and voltmeter, so that the student may 
make his preliminary studies under exactly known 
