For protecting a coherer from undesired stimuli, e.g., from the radiator at its own station, the general method is described on [page 35], &c., and the details of it, with the necessary switch for changing over from sending to receiving, are mentioned further on ([page 60]). But by referring to [page 106] it will be seen that M. Branly had already employed such a protecting case, and had worked details out admirably.
Recently Signor Tommasina has shown that, if one end of a short rod or wire be dipped into filings while sparks are occurring in the neighbourhood, the filings adhere to it and to each other, and with care a long string of them can be picked up. The author has examined the behaviour of filings under electrical influence on a glass plate in a microscope, and their movements towards the formation of a complete conducting bridge between the tinfoil terminals together with their disjunctive behaviour when the electrical stimulus is too strong, the thorough cohesion set up by a succession of electrical stimuli, and the partial or complete disruption by an appropriate mechanical stimulus is instructive.
An earlier and most important telegraphic application, based upon information given in the preceding lecture, was made in 1895 by Prof. Popoff, of Russia, and will be mentioned shortly ([see page 62]). I now proceed to developments of syntonic or attuned telegraphy on the true Hertz-wave principle, the preliminary experiments on which are mentioned above in connection with the figures on [page 27].
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE
TELEGRAPHIC DIRECTION.
SYNTONIC TELEGRAPHY.
In the present state of the law in this country it appears to be necessary for a scientific man whose investigations may have any practical bearing to refrain from communicating his work to any scientific society, or publishing it in any journal until he has registered it and paid a fee to the Government under the so-called Patent Law. This unfortunate system is well calculated to prevent scientific men in general from giving any attention to practical applications, and to deter them from an attempt to make their researches useful to the community. If a scientific worker publishes in the natural way, no one has any rights in the thing published; it is given away and lies useless, for no one will care to expend capital upon a thing over which he has no effective control. In this case practical developments generally wait until some outsider steps in and either patents some slight addition or modification, or else, as sometimes happens, patents the whole thing, with some slight addition. If a scientific worker refrains from publishing and himself takes out a patent, there are innumerable troubles and possible litigation ahead of him, at least if the thing turns out at all remunerative; but the probability is that, in his otherwise occupied hands, it will not so turn out until the period of his patent right has expired.
Pending a much-to-be-desired emendation of the law, whereby the courts can take cognisance of discoveries or fundamental steps in an invention communicated to and officially dated by a responsible scientific society, and can thereafter award to the discoverer such due and moderate recompense as shall seem appropriate when a great industry has risen on the basis of that same discovery or fundamental invention—pending this much-to-be-desired modification of the law, it appears to be necessary to go through the inappropriate and repulsive form of registering a claim to an attempt at a monopoly. The instinct of the scientific worker is to publish everything, to hope that any useful aspect of it may be as quickly as possible utilised, and to trust to the instinct for fair play that he shall not be the loser when the thing becomes commercially profitable. To grant him a monopoly is to grant him a more than doubtful boon; to grant him the privilege of fighting for his monopoly is to grant him a pernicious privilege, which will sap his energy, waste his time, and destroy his power of future production.
Fig. 24
(Fig. 5 of Specification 11,575/97).—Syntonic Radiator,
adapted for sending and for receiving.