Ill 
WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY & ITS 
MILITARY POSSIBILITIES. 
BY 
CAPTAIN W. P. BRETT, R.E. 
(A Lecture delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich , Thursday 9th Dec., 1897). 
Major-General F. T. Lloyd, C.B. in the chair. 
THE Chairman —Ladies and gentlemen, I have mncli pleasure in in¬ 
troducing the Lecturer to you ; he is known to most of you, and I can 
only say that I am sure that all in this large and distinguished audience 
must look forward to his very interesting account of the progress 
made in that wonderful science of “ Wireless Telegraphy.” I will not 
intervene between you and the lecturer but will beg him to commence. 
CAPrAiN Brett —General Lloyd, ladies and gentlemen. No excuse 
I think, is needed for bringing this subject to the notice of a military 
institution, as the successful conduct of military operations is at the 
present day largely dependent on the facility with which intelligence 
can be transmitted and orders conveyed. 
It is necessary to remark at the outset that by the expression 
" wireless telegraphy ” it must not be understood that electric con¬ 
ductors are entirely dispensed with, as will be evident if you will look 
for a moment at the number of wires about the floor and roof of this 
room. The term implies only that intelligible signals can, under cer¬ 
tain conditions, be exchanged between two stations without their beino* 
connected with each other by the usual conductor. In fact, by one of 
the systems which I shall try to explain to you, a greater length of 
conducting wire is required than with the ordinary direct method, but 
the wire is not run between the two stations. On the other hand, with 
another system, which I shall call “ Marconi's,” the amount of conduct¬ 
ing wire is reduced to quite a small amount. 
There is a tendency on the part of many people to form a somewhat 
exaggerated idea as to the capabilities of any new scientific discovery 
or invention, so that it will not be out of place to tell you at once that 
there is no sign yet of any system of wireless telegraphy which will come 
asarival to the existing telegraphic methods, or even to the visual methods 
of signalling adopted in the naval and military services. But there 
have now been discovered some additional facilities for communication 
which may, under certain circumstances, prove of great value. The 
3. YOL. XXV. 
