THE WIRELESS TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
have read with very great interest the letter signed "X." in the Spectator of October 26th, and with particular sympathy for the sentiments expressed in its last paragraph. One of the dangers of the spread of technical and science teaching, including what must be described as.the wholesale cramming for science degrees, is a possible decline in the power of intellectualising the terminology and the formulte of the schools, and in the exercise of independent thought. The imagination seems not unlikely to be paralysed by the tyranny of accepted modes of expression, and the mind to become no longer open to the recognition of phenomena which contra- diet, or appear to contradict, the academic theory. All philosophic lovers of science will agree with your correspon. dent's plea against allowing the critical faculty of the expert to discourage unduly the creative faculty of a "genius of the runaway order," or to repress a novelty — whether an idea or a phenomenon — until it has secured sufficient patronage from the experts to appear "respectable." But as a critic, and not as a creator, I deprecate your correspondent's application of the term "new forces" to the wireless phenomena on which he descants. It is very nearly seventy years since electro-chemical decompo- sition was effected by means of an electric "current," but without contact with the " poles " of the metallic conductor, —a kind of " wireless " action at a sensible distance; and it is about the same length of time since the same discoverer remarked on the singular " independence " of the magnetism and the revolving steel magnet which carried it. For sixty years the earth has been used as the return "wire" for innumerable telegraphic circuits. It is now, moreover, some years since my friend Mr. John Milne (Seismic Milne) demon- strated that he was able, in the Isle of Wight, without wires, to detect and locate an earthquake in Japan within a few minutes (or was it seconds ?) of time after its occurrence. We may, therefore, reasonably hesitate to believe that Messrs. Armstrong and Orling have discovered "new forces." A less dogmatic definition of the old forces, and a more general cultivation of the habit of lateral vision, would doubt- less result in increased knowledge of them; but we shall not be likely to make much progress in real discovery if we begin by recklessly assuming a breach of continuity.—I am,
Manchester.
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