WIRELESS PIONEER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23614, 26 March 1940, Page 7

WIRELESS PIONEER

DEATH AT AGE OF 98 PROFESSOR EDOUARD BRANLY (Received March 25, 7 p.m.) PARIS, March 2-1 The death has occurred of Professor Edouard Branly, one of the pioneers of wireless. Professor Edouard Branly was born at Amiens in October, 1844. After attending schools in Paris he taught at Bourges Lycee and became in 1869 joint-director of the physical laboratory of the Sorbonne. He had to work in a room overlooking a: street where the vibration of the traffic made accuracy impossible. In 1875 the head of the Catholic University offered to give

him a laboratory there. He was installed "temporarily" in a disused room and was still there 58 years later. In 1898 he was awarded a prize bv the French Academy of Science and in 1903 shared the Osiris Prize with Madame Curie. For his radio discovery he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and later raised to the grade of Commander. At the age of 87 and in poverty he was made a grand officer of the legion. Professor Branly carried out experiments into the conductivity of a number of substances under various electrical conditions and published the results in 1891. He went on to make the important discovery that the conductivity imparted to metal filings by an electrical discharge was at once destroyed by tapping the tube in which they were contained. This was the origin of the coherer on which Marconi's system was based. Marconi utilised the discovery.