Inaugural Address by the President. 31 



A method of much greater scientific interest as well as of 

 later invention is that which has been recently perfected and 

 brought into notice by Marconi. In this form of wireless 

 telegraphy the message is carried by wave motions in the 

 aether. In one sense it is not more wonderful than signalling 

 by flashes of light ; light waves being also wave motions in 

 the aether, but with waves very much shorter than those used 

 in telegraphy. 



It will be interesting to recall briefly the history of the dis- 

 covery of these electromagnetic aether waves. 



In the year 1845 that greatest of all experimental philosophers 

 Michael Faraday, tells us — " I have long held an opinion almost 

 amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other 

 lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which 

 the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin, 

 or in other words are so directly related and mutually dependent 

 that they are convertible as it were one into another and 

 possess equivalents of power in their action, This strong 

 persuasion extended to the powers of light and led to many 

 exertions having for their object the discovery of the direct 

 relation of light and electricity, but the results were negative. 



These ineffectual exertions could not remove my strong 

 persuasion derived from philosophical considerations, and, 

 therefore, I recently resumed the enquiry by experiment in a 

 most strict and searching manner, and have at last succeeded in 

 magnetizing and electrifying a ray of light." 



We can imagine the great philosopher standing thus, as it 

 were, on the farthest bound of knowledge, at the utmost point 

 of discovery jutting out into the misty waters of the as yet dim 

 unknown, gazing, examining into the depths of the infinitely 

 possible, watching each dim foredawning of those gigantic 

 truths, which that finest almost supernatural intuition with 

 which he was endowed, convinced him existed there. 



With this intuitive experimentahzation of Faraday wc 

 contrast — but cannot compare — the brilliant deductions of 

 Clerk Maxwell, who, in a later time, working on the experi- 



