i6 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



one or another shall catch your ear ? Go where you will, to the 

 ocean or the wilderness or the Pole, you cannot escape that vast 

 company of attendants ; they come to you, unheard, unseen, from 

 every quarter of the globe with a swiftness no other messengers 

 approach. Is any fairy tale so strange as that reality ? In all the 

 wizardry of science surely there is nothing more wonderful than 

 this. 



IV. 



Among the inventions which have revolutionised the habits of 

 modern man some were developed by steps that were mainly 

 empirical. Others, especially those that are most recent, have had 

 a very different history : science has been their incubator and their 

 forcing-house. In the advance of any invention there is bound to 

 be an element of trial and error, but when the scientific method is 

 consistently applied the proportion of error is small and progress is 

 swift. We see this exemplified in the development of mechanical 

 flight, where one difficulty after another has been vanquished by 

 aid of well-directed theory and well-related experiment. Or con- 

 sider that immensely important modern art, the art of communica- 

 tion by telegraph and telephone, by wire and ' wireless.' There 

 the eff'orts of scientific engineers were dominant at every stage, 

 and it was through their guidance that the art quickly achieved its 

 world-wide triumphs. It is true that in the story of long-distance 

 radio-telegraphy there was a striking episode where the courage 

 of the practical inventor forestalled the discovery of a recondite 

 scientific fact. It happens that the wireless waves from a radio- 

 station, instead of shooting out straight into space as such rays 

 might be expected to do, become bent in the upper regions of the 

 atmosphere, taking a surprising and convenient curvature which 

 enables them to travel round the surface of the globe. An unlooked- 

 for kindness on the part of Nature has provided what we now call 

 the Heaviside layer by which she works this happy trick. The 

 strange fact that the rays could somehow bend was recognised and 

 applied by Marconi before anybody had a rational explanation to 

 suggest. Speaking broadly, however, it was scientific nursing of the 

 infant art, and scientific culture throughout its period of growth, that 

 brought it to the splendid manhood which now blesses mankind. 



I think we may regard the whole art of electrical communication 

 as an unqualified blessing, which even the folly of nations cannot 

 pervert : in that regard it differs conspicuously from some other 

 inventions. Before it came into use the sections of civilised man 

 were far more separate than they will ever be again. There could 

 be scant sympathy or understanding, little chance of effective 

 co-operation among communities scattered over the earth. A 



