AuGTSST 20, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



235 



involved; but Bell at New York and Wat- 

 son in San Francisco inaugurated the long- 

 distance conversations by using the same 

 transmitters and receivers which these same 

 gentlemen had used in the beginning of 

 telephoning, in 1876, over the line two 

 miles long between Boston and Cambridge. 

 The great improvements in the thirty-nine 

 intervening years lie elsewhere in the sys- 

 tem. It is possible for San Francisco to 

 talk with New York and Boston, and at 

 quite reasonable expense, because Professor 

 Pupin, of Columbia University, as a result 

 of systematic study, construction and test, 

 discovered that by placing his invention, 

 the so-called "loading coils," at certain 

 appropriate intervals in an electric line, 

 thus making what electricians call a suit- 

 able balance between inductance, electro- 

 static capacity and resistance, the current 

 could be compelled to go through to its dis- 

 tant destination with little loss of strength. 

 Pupin 's loading coils are inserted at fre- 

 quent intervals in the San Francisco-New 

 York line. It might be possible to construct 

 a line without the Pupin coils which would 

 let us talk directly with New York, but the 

 installation expenses for very large copper 

 wires and other costly items would be so 

 high as to impose prohibitive tolls. The 

 happy result has been reached because the 

 telephone company combined an exceed- 

 ingly liberal and far-seeing policy with the 

 latest discoveries in electricity as a pure 

 and applied science; and all concerned are 

 entitled to receive the grateful thanks of 

 the Pacific and Atlantic peoples. 



Wireless telegraphy has been a priceless 

 servant to those whose friends go down to 

 the sea in ships. It has averted many 

 frightful disasters in the past decade. 

 This branch of electricity was made pos- 

 sible by the researches of the lamented 

 Herz and others who studied the properties 

 of electrical waves as we study the light 



from the nebulae — from the point of view 

 of pure knowledge. 



While the foundations of the sciences 

 have, for the most part, been laid under the 

 auspices of the universities and the special 

 research institutions, it is usually the com- 

 bination of men of science and successful 

 men of affairs which makes the sciences 

 useful to the people in general, and there- 

 fore great factors in the advancement of 

 civilization. To mention only one subject, 

 electricity: we can not compute the world's 

 indebtedness to the pioneers, Volta and 

 Galvani, nor to the great developers of the 

 subject, Faraday and Maxwell; but it is a 

 fact that electricity did relatively little for 

 mankind in general before the year 1865. 

 The world is unable to compute its indebt- 

 edness to Edison, Bell, Marconi and other 

 great inventors and business men combined 

 who have brought electricity to everybody 's 

 house and office, to every factory, to every 

 village, to every ship as an obedient and 

 ever-ready servant. That these gentlemen 

 have made commercial successes of their 

 ventures seems to have caused certain per- 

 sons to lose interest in them as men of sci- 

 ence. I have no sympathy with that point 

 of view. Only those who have tried it can 

 know how much courage is required to risk 

 everything in a new venture, how many 

 hours of day and night are given to thought 

 of the subject from all possible angles, how 

 unceasingly must be the maintenance of 

 discipline in great business organizations. 

 Not only is financial success doubly earned, 

 and most desirable as an incentive to the 

 succeeding generations, but financial suc- 

 cess is absolutely synonymous with making 

 the subject useful to mankind. It is a for- 

 tunate fact that there are Stephensons and 

 Fultons, Edisons and Marconis, as well as 

 Newtons and Laplaces, Darwins and Tlelm- 

 holtzes. The latter have laid the founda- 

 tions broad and deep, but the former have 



