G.— ENGINEERING; 123 



Hertz was the first to produce apparatus for transmitting and receiving 

 wireless waves, and this apparatus was improved by Branly, Lodge and 

 many others, but for further progress finance was needed. The first 

 steps to make a wireless telegraphic installation were taken in Italy by 

 Marconi and in Great Britain by the Admiralty experiments carried out 

 by Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, who was then a Captain. In this kind of 

 competition money counts for much, and in the development of an in- 

 vention having a commercial as well as a service aspect a commercial firm 

 with good financial backing will always have a great advantage over a 

 Government Department with a strictly limited Budget allowance for 

 research. It says much, therefore, for the scientific direction of the 

 Admiralty of that time that the Admiralty are to-day numbered among 

 the pioneers of this great invention. 



I have taken wireless as a typical illustration. To the man in the 

 street it represents simply an invention, a single invention and an ap- 

 parently simple one represented by a small wooden box with a knob to 

 turn. But to the scientific historian who tries to decipher all that the 

 little box represents in human thought and effort, it presents an appearance 

 of amazing complexity in which the discoveries and inventions of some of 

 the finest brains of two centuries are inextricably blended. The proverbial 

 tree of knowledge is a good simile. It grows incessantly but imperceptibly, 

 sending forth new shoots which in turn become branches and subdivide 

 in their turn. Growth is not confined to the shoots, however, and a con- 

 tinuous process of consolidation and expansion is taking place in the 

 trunk and root and branches. The sprouting of a new shoot is a new dis- 

 covery and the consolidation work behind it and upon which it is based 

 is invention. 



Invention as a Historical Science. 



Invention being generally concerned with the application of physical 

 forces in the service of man may at first sight appear to be a branch of 

 physical science pure and simple. It is, however, actually concerned less 

 with the scientific principles of physics than with the human element, 

 with limitations which that element imposes, with peculiar conditions 

 under which the forces of nature have to be applied and with the unknown 

 elements in physical science. It belongs, therefore, if treated as a science, 

 by itself, rather to that group of sciences which are concerned with 

 humanity and nature at large, the so-called Historical Sciences. Economic 

 Science, a typical historical science, is studied by thousands as a science, 

 yet it has no fundamental physical principles like the conservation of 

 energy on which to build its superstructure, because its working material 

 is the human element which has not so far been reduced to any funda- 

 mental basic principles worthy of the name of laws. It is in what Lord 

 Kelvin would have called the Natural History stage of its development, 

 during which observations are made and correlated, to be followed by the 

 Natural Philosophy stage when the fundamental principles are discovered 

 which explain the observed facts and cast upon the scientist the mantle 

 of the prophet. 



A historical science which is studied at great length in the Staff Colleges 

 of the Armies and Navies of the world is the Science of War. It has no 



