The Story of Wireless Telegraphy

e have any knowledge is Mr. J. W. Wilkins, whose experiments were begun in 1845. Wilkins was associated for many years with Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone, the pioneers of electric telegraphy in Great Britain; and in a letter appearing in the Mining Journal, March 28, 1849, he clearly sets forth a method whereby, as he conceived, telegraphic communication might be established between England and France, which the submarine cable had not at that time joined. As this letter, from the suggestions it contains, is of great importance in the history of wireless telegraphy, it will be well to give almost entire the writer's description of the method by which he proposed to carry out his " theory upon which a telegraphic communication may be made between England and France without wires." " I take for certain," he proceeds?" as experi- WILKINS' SUGGESTION. 27 ments I have made have shown me?that when the positive and negative poles of a battery are dipped into or connected with any conducting medium, the electricity around the positive pole is positive, being diffused in radial lines, and the part around the negative pole is negative in radial lines converging toward it, supplying the electricity requisite for the decomposition of the substances composing the battery. This understood, it is evident that when a positive radial line sets out from the junction of the battery with the earth it makes its way to, or is attracted by the nearest negative portion of earth,...