SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



CONDUCTED BY JAMES QUICK. 



Wireless Telegraphy. — It is to be hoped that 

 the removal of the wireless telegraph installation 

 at the South Foreland lighthouse and the Goodwin 

 lightship is not a permanent one. It has certainly 

 proved of great practical value, and has demon- 

 strated to a marked degree the utility of the system 

 for signalling to lighthouses and lightships. About 

 a year ago the equipment was installed upon an 

 experimental basis ; but as, apparently, the Trinity 

 House authorities had no funds at their disposal 

 to purchase the instruments, and the latter are 

 wanted elsewhere by the Wireless Telegraph Com- 

 pany, they were removed some weeks since. 



Eelations between Electricity and Engi- 

 neering. — This formed the subject of this year's 

 "James Forrest" lecture, delivered by Sir William 

 Preece, C.B., F.R.S., before the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers. Feeling keenly that the subject was 

 far too wide a one to be discussed from all points, 

 the lecturer confined himself almost exclusively to 

 the miscellaneous uses to which electricity had 

 been, and was being, put to obtain engineering 

 results. Of the extensiveness and ease of applied 

 electricity Sir William Preece holds as high opinions 

 as anyone. " No magician or poet," he said. " ever 

 conceived so potent a power within the easy reach 

 of man." In treating of the transmission of elec- 

 tricity over great distances he said : " Sitting on 

 the shores of the Atlantic in Ireland, one can 

 manipulate a magnetic field in Newfoundland so 

 as to record simultaneously on paper in conven- 

 tional characters slowly written words. Thus we 

 have bridged the ocean and annihilated space." 

 If Sir William Preece's opinion upon the com- 

 mercial success of wireless telegraphy methods is 

 accepted as an authoritative one. possibly the 

 ardour of some commercial men has been damped 

 by a remark made by the lecturer that there was 

 " no commercial business in it." 



New Typewriting Telegraph. —This instru- 

 ment, the invention of Mr. W. S. Steljes, is shortly 

 to be put upon the market by the Typewriter Tele- 

 graph Corporation, Limited. It is of simple con- 

 struction, and requires no battery power, the 

 electrical energy being generated by a magneto- 

 instrument. In working the instrument a record 

 is made at both ends of the line in the form of a 

 printed copy of the message sent, and, as it can be 

 used in conjunction with telephone lines, both 

 verbal and printed messages can be sent. 



Nineteenth-Century Clouds oyer Physics. 

 The Friday evening lectures at the Royal Insti- 

 tution were resumed, after the Easter vacation, on 

 April 27th, Lord Kelvin commencing the present 

 series with a discoivrse upon " Nineteenth-Century 

 Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and 

 Light." It could not be considered a brilliant one 

 from the experimental and popular points of view ; 

 nevertheless, it is a very valuable one to physicists, 

 coming as it did from such an authority as Lord 



Kelvin. The first cloud referred to was that which 

 came into evidence with the undulatory theory of 

 light. If the ether be assumed to be an elastic 

 solid, as required by this theory, it is difficult to 

 conceive how the earth and other bodies can move 

 so freely through the ether. In spite, however, of 

 the investigations of Young, Michelson, Morley, 

 Lodge, and others, on the relation between ether 

 and matter, leading to the result from which Lord 

 Kelvin saw no possibility of escape, viz. that there 

 is no motion of the ether relative to matter, he 

 persisted in his opinion that matter does not move 

 freely through the ether. The second great un- 

 dissolved cloud over the dynamical theory lay in 

 the Maxwell-Boltzmann doctrine of the partition 

 of kinetic energy. This doctrine also Lord Kelvin, 

 from many recent calculations, is induced to say is 

 not true. At the conclusion of the discourse Lord 

 Kelvin brought forward some considerations respect- 

 ing the structure of the atom and the ether, point- 

 ing out that the ether must be truly imponderable, 

 and quite outside the law of universal gravitation. 



Society of Arts. — At a special meeting of the 

 Council of the Society of Arts, held at Marl- 

 borough House on May 8th, the Prince of Wales 

 (President) presented the Albert Medal of the 

 Society to SirW. Crookes, F.R.S., " for his extensive 

 and laborious researches in chemistry and physics, 

 researches which have in many instances developed 

 into useful, practical applications in the arts and 

 manufactures." 



The Telephonograph. — No one can deny the 

 advantages of being provided with a telephone in 

 one's office or rooms, in spite of the constant irri- 

 tation of the call-bell and the shortcomings of the 

 telephone companies. The telephonograph, how- 

 ever, is to prove an additional boon, in that tele- 

 phonic messages can be received and recorded in 

 one's absence. This instrument, which is a modi- 

 fication of the phonograph, is provided with a steel 

 band which replaces the wax cylinder of the 

 Edison phonograph ; a magnet, controlled by a 

 telephone, being also substituted for the ordinary 

 phonographic style. Currents transmitted by the 

 telephone pass through an electro-magnet and 

 produce consequent poles on the steel band, a 

 somewhat converse operation being employed for 

 reproducing the sound. A long line can, of course, . 

 intervene between the transmitting telephone and 

 the phonograph itself. 



The Royal Society. — The gentlemen's con- 

 versazione of the Royal Society took place on 

 Wednesday evening, May 9th. Among the elec- 

 trical exhibits shown was one by Professor S. P. 

 Thompson, illustrating the converse to De la Rive's 

 experiment with a floating battery. Little floating 

 magnets enclosed in glass tubes took the place of 

 the floating battery. An immersed hollow coil 

 carrying an electric current provided the necessary 

 magnetic field, which determined the movements 

 of the magnets. This experiment should be a 

 most useful and simple one to lecturers upon 

 electricity, as it would certainly assist students 

 in grasping the important principles underlying. 

 Mr." P. E. Shaw exhibited his electrical micro- 

 meter, a description of which appeared in this 

 column for last month. Among the candidates 

 recently selected by the Council of the Royal 

 Society for election into the Society are two 

 distinguished physicists, Professor G. J. Burch, 

 M.A., and Dr. James Gordon MacGregor. 



