even after that date, for they gave hopes of a much
more economical solution of the problem. Among
the most interesting are remembered those that S.W.
Wilkins carried on for a long time between France
and England. Like Cooke and Wheatstone, he thought
of using as a receiver an apparatus which in some features
resembles the present receiver of the submarine telegraph.
Later, George E. Dering, then James Bowman and Lindsay,
made on the same lines trials which are worthy of
being remembered.
But it is only in our own days that Sir William H.
Preece at last obtained for the first time really
practical results. Sir William himself effected
and caused to be executed by his associates—he
is chief consulting engineer to the General Post Office
in England— researches conducted with much
method and based on precise theoretical considerations.
He thus succeeded in establishing very easy, clear,
and regular communications between various places;
for example, across the Bristol Channel. The
long series of operations accomplished by so many
seekers, with the object of substituting a material
and natural medium for the artificial lines of metal,
thus met with an undoubted success which was soon
to be eclipsed by the widely-known experiments directed
into a different line by Marconi.
It is right to add that Sir William Preece had himself
utilised induction phenomena in his experiments, and
had begun researches with the aid of electric waves.
Much is due to him for the welcome he gave to Marconi;
it is certainly thanks to the advice and the material
support he found in Sir William that the young scholar
succeeded in effecting his sensational experiments.
Sec. 4
The starting-point of the experiments based on the
properties of the luminous ether, and having for their
object the transmission of signals, is very remote;
and it would be a very laborious task to hunt up all
the work accomplished in that direction, even if we
were to confine ourselves to those in which electrical
reactions play a part. An electric reaction,
an electrostatic influence, or an electromagnetic
phenomenon, is transmitted at a distance through the
air by the intermediary of the luminous ether.
But electric influence can hardly be used, as the
distances it would allow us to traverse would be much
too restricted, and electrostatic actions are often
very erratic. The phenomena of induction, which
are very regular and insensible to the variations
of the atmosphere, have, on the other hand, for a
long time appeared serviceable for telegraphic purposes.
We might find, in a certain number of the attempts
just mentioned, a partial employment of these phenomena.
Lindsay, for instance, in his project of communication
across the sea, attributed to them a considerable
role. These phenomena even permitted a true telegraphy
without intermediary wire between the transmitter and
the receiver, at very restricted distances, it is
true, but in peculiarly interesting conditions.
It is, in fact, owing to them that C. Brown, and later
Edison and Gilliland, succeeded in establishing communications
with trains in motion.
