JULV 26, 1906] 



NA TURE 



291 



telephony there can be little doubt but that by the 

 application of those two sciences he has effected a 

 greater revolution in human affairs than by all his 

 successes in the way of heavy engineering. He may 

 " electrify " our railways, especially the suburban 

 lines, to the great advantage of both the travelling 

 public and the shareholder, but he is still only doing 

 for us in another way what the mechanical engineer 

 has already accomplished. He may harness the great 

 waterfalls and transmit their power over hundreds 

 of miles to localities at which it can be more easily 

 utilised, but he is only saving Mahomet the trouble 

 of going to the mountain. He may provide for us 

 in the arc lamp and the glow lamp the most efficient 

 means of producing artificial light, but he is only 

 supplying us with an alternative to the cheaper pro- 

 ductions of the gas engineers. But with telegraphy 

 he has given us something entirely new — an art 

 which, whilst actually annihilating distance, virtually 

 annihifates time. So familiar have we become with 

 the operations of the telegraphist that few probably 

 over realise how closely dependent upon them is every 

 detail of modern civilised life. We speak of the 

 twentieth century as being, or as promising to be, the 

 electrical age, and we think of the railways, the 

 lighting, and the development of [X)wer, whereas in 

 reality it is the electrical age because of the telegraph 

 and the telephone. If the vast network of thin wires 

 which stretch over the civilised world like the threads 

 of a spider's w'eb were suddenly wiped out to-morrow, 

 we should as suddenly realise with the non-appear- 

 ance of the morning paper what it meant to be 

 thrown back into the age before electricity. 



In spite of the enormous influence which telegraphy 

 exercises in our daily life, we hear a great deal less 

 about it than we do of a number of unimportant 

 things. Few people write papers upon it. The 

 Journal of the Institution ol Electrical Engineers, 

 originally the Society of Telegraph Engineers, will 

 be found almost free from such papers during the 

 past ten years. Fewer people write books. The 

 reason is not far to seek. Every applied science 

 passes through three stages — the stages of incubation, 

 of growth, and of maturity. In the first stage the 

 outsider hears little about it ; some few who are speci- 

 ally interested in scientific research may be aware 

 that some observations of the natural philosopher are 

 being developed along lines that promise results of 

 great practical utility. At length a point is reached 

 when the practical value of the work becomes so 

 self-evident that even the halfpenny paper realises it, 

 and the world is provided with a new nine-days' 

 wonder. From now begins the period of grow'th 

 during which publicity is excessive. Everyone talks 

 about the new discovery. Everyone who can makes 

 experiments in connection with it, and publishes his 

 results in papers, and those who cannot afford the 

 time to experiment write books on the subject. After 

 a period more or less protracted public interest wanes, 

 and is diverted, we will say, to a scandal of tinned 

 meat, and, what is more important, the science, froru 

 being e.xperimental and much talked of, becomes 

 practical and much used. 



NO. 191 7. VOL. 74] 



In the art of telegraphy we sec a science which 

 reached, long ago, the last stage. If anyone 

 wishes for a general idea of the extent of telegraphy 

 at the present day let him read Mr. Herbert's book. 

 Unless he is an expert, or studying to become one, he 

 will probably realise more from the style in which 

 the book is written than from the study of it in 

 detail. He will see that here he is dealing with 

 something which is firmly established, in which 

 methods and apparatus have become almost stereo- 

 typed, and in which progress can only be exceedingly 

 slow because everything is already so highly developed 

 and because the interests which are vested in the 

 methods now in use are so gigantic that only a 

 revolution can warrant their overthrow. Mr. Herbert's 

 book is full and concise, and a vast amount of in- 

 formation is condensed into its pages. At the same 

 time it is simple, as befits a book intended for young 

 students and dealing with a subject in which sim- 

 plicity has been reached through complexity. 



In the three books on wireless telegraphy before 

 us we see good illustrations of what has been said 

 above of the stage of growth of an applied science. 

 Mr. White's book is a somewhat belated arrival, be- 

 longing properly to a few years back. It is purely 

 descriptive, almost purely popular, and should have 

 been written when the general public had a keen and 

 living interest in the subject. Inasmuch as it de- 

 scribes the latest systems it has a certain claim to 

 existence. But wireless telegraphy has almost reached 

 the third stage, and before long we shall cease to 

 hear anything more about it, and, taking it for 

 granted, will concern ourselves only with grumbling 

 at its cost. That it has not fully reached the final 

 stages is sufficiently shown by Dr. Fleming's and 

 Dr. Eichorn's books. Of Dr. Eichorn's book we can 

 only say that we should have greatly welcomed its 

 appearance had it not been for the almost simultaneous 

 publication of Dr. Fleming's work. Dr. Eichorn was 

 manager of the large experimental stations for Prof. 

 Braun, and w-rites specially about the systems which 

 have been developed by Slaby, Arco and Braun intf) 

 the " Telefunken " system, which shares, we suppose, 

 with the Marconi system the honour of being the 

 most important and most practical systems yet de- 

 veloped. The book is well written, and combines 

 with a good deal of description a careful investiga- 

 tion of the fundamental theoretical phenomena. 



But in Dr. Fleming's book we have undoubtedly 

 the one to be recommended to students specially 

 interested in wireless telegraphy, and the practical 

 development already attained warrants the existence of 

 a certain number of such students. If technical educa- 

 tion were organised in an ideal manner there would 

 exist a professorial board the duties .of which would 

 be to prescribe exactly the literature which a student 

 should and should not read. Such a bodv would 

 allow anyone to write and publish books, and would 

 not prohibit reading them until the tentative efforts 

 of various authors resulted in the production of one 

 or more books containing all the information on the 

 subject which could be regarded as necessary and 

 sufficient. Then they would say to the student : 



