112 
WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. 
tendency to over-estimate the capabilities of a scientific contrivance is 
very natural, for the general public can do little else but take the 
opinions of well-known scientific men, some of whose statements 
should be accorded a poetic license. I have in my mind an article 
on “ Some possibilities of Electricity,” which appeared in February, 
1892, in the Fortnightly Review , and attracted considerable attention 
at the time. I hope you will bear with me if I read a few short ex¬ 
tracts from this article, which, prophetic in 1892, is still prophetic. 
The only thing that can be claimed is, that one step (perhaps a con¬ 
siderable one), has been made towards fulfilment. 
Fortnightly Review— February, 1892 :— 
“ Whether vibrations of the ether, longer than those which affect us 
as light, may not be constantly at work around us, we have, until 
lately never seriously enquired ; but the researches of Lodge in Eng¬ 
land and Hertz in Germany give us an almost infinite range of 
ethereal vibrations or electrical rays from wave lengths of thousands 
of miles down to a few feet. Here is unfolded to us a new and aston¬ 
ishing world—one which is hard to conceive should contain no 
possibilities of transmitting and receiving intelligence. Eays of light 
will not pierce through a wall, nor, as we know only too well, through 
a London fog ; but the electrical vibrations of a yard or more in 
wave length will easily pierce such mediums, which to them will be 
transparent. Here then is revealed the bewildering possibility of tele¬ 
graphy without wires, posts, cables, or any of: our present costly 
appliances. Granted a few reasonable postulates, the whole thing 
comes well within the realms of possible fulfilment. 
* * * * An experimentalist at a distance can receive some, if not 
all, of these rays on a properly constituted instrument, and by con¬ 
certed signals, messages in the Morse code can thus pass from one 
operator to another. Any two friends living’ within the range of sen¬ 
sibility of their receiving instruments, having’ first decided on their 
special wave length and attuned their respective instruments to mutual 
receptivity, could thus communicate as long and as often as they 
pleased by, timing the impulses to produce long and short intervals 
on the ordinary Morse code. * * * * This is no mere dream of 
a visionary philosopher. * * * * Even now indeed” (remember 
speaking in 1892) “^telegraphing without wires is possible within a 
restricted radius of a few hundred yards.” In spite of this pro¬ 
phecy we are not yet within a reasonable distance of seeing our 
familiar telegraph posts and wires disappear from the face of the 
earth, however desirable from anaesthetic point of view such a con¬ 
summation might appear. "We may expect this when the facilities 
offered by telegraphy without wires are equal to or g’reater than the 
facilities given by the use of wires. At present this is very far from 
being the case. Nor can one at present see the probability even, of 
wireless telegraphy ever equalling in its facilities of communication 
telegraphy with wires, although no one will venture to set limits to 
the possibilities of scientific discovery, icor/g 
I should make one word of personal acknowledgment before putting 
