ROMANCE OF WIRELESS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1436, 10 May 1912, Page 2

ROMANCE OF WIRELESS.

SIR 0. LODGE AND MYSTERY OF SOUND WAVES. Sir Oliver Lodge, in a lecture at Birmingham University on wireless tclcgraphv, said tlmt as they all knew something'of the practical side of the subject ho would devoto what ho had to say to ilie more theoretical discovery. Really, the. beginning of wireless telegraphy as thev knew it to-day was made by Clnrk Maxwell, a wonderful man of science, who died before his great abilities were known properly to the world. In 18G5, after many experiments, Clark Maxwell discovered that the ether of space possessed properties which enabled it to transmit sound wans. The two properties of the ether which made this possible were. noj. vet discovered. Indeed, they were not yet known separately after so many years. Hertz, the German, made further important discoveries in 1888, and he (Sir Oliver) ha diho pleasure of working with this distinguished scientist in the nineties. (Applause.) Wireless did not become n branch of engineering until the vear 189G, when Marconi pave to the world liis wonderful knowledge. Proceeding, the lecturer remnrked that it was thought extraordinary when sounds travelled along wires, but the astonishing thing really was that wireless telegraphy was not discovered first, Sound waves did not travel, as they might at first suppose, through the earth. Ihcy went round, having two conductors, the minor nir and the'sea. A sound wave that would travel fiflv miles on land would travel hundreds of miles on the sea.