WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1424, 15 June 1899, Page 10

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

WHO WAS THE FIRST INVENTOR? A POOR DUNDEE MECHANIC • ’o Vir< T less telegraphy"’ was practised in Scotland by a Scotsman before Marconi was born (says the ■‘Weekly Scotsman” of the 22nd April). In giving an account of any “discovery” or invention, it is but right to give honour to whom honour is due. Therefore, we cannot refrain from paying a tribute to the memory of the man who. in those islands at least, was the first to suggest a method of signalling across space without intervening wires. The man we refer to was James Bowman Lindsay, wlic was born at Carmyllie in the year 1799. Not only did Lindsay suggest; he also carried out successful experiments in proof of his theories. James Bowman Lindsay was a- man after Smiles’s own heart, and one whose biography would have supplied the writer of “Self-Help"’ with splendid material. Certainly few, ix any, have ae complislied so much during a long lifetime of penury. All his life he had to pinch himself to the utmost limits in order to purchase materials for liis numerous experiments. He worked, and worked alone, on the borders of starvation. He had no house—at least the house he had, if it could be called a house, consisted of one room—all he could afford—but that solitary room had in it more than any palace in the world could boast at the period to which we refer. It was lit up by an electric light of his own installation—in the year 1835! It is difficult to realise that sixty-four years ago a room in Scotland could have been so illuminated. That same room was famous for other reasons —it was here Lindsay wrote several of his works, and that portion of his marvellous dictionary in fifty different languages, which, in his own handwriting, is to be seen at this day in a glass case in the Dundee Museum.

In 1845 he suggested the possibility of extending the electric telegraph to America. In 1853 he maintained that it was possible to establish electrical communication through water without wires. In 1854 he patented this invention, and in the same year he conducted experiments in London and Portsmouth, where lie successfully telegraphed without wires across a stretch oi" water 500 yards wide.

In 1859 he telegraphed in this manner across the river Tay at Glencarse, where it is about half a mile wide, and also read a paper on the subject before the British Association at Aberdeen. In presence of the members. Lindsay conducted experiments at the Aberdeen Docks, when-lie proved conclusively the correctness of his theories.

That Lindsay’s was a prescient mind will be seen in the remarkable words inserted in the advertisement announcing the opening of his science classes, ivhich appeared in the “Dundee Advertiser” of April 11. 1834:—“Houses and towns w T ill in a short time be lighted by electricity instead of gas, and heated by it instead of coals, and machinery will be wrought by it instead of steam, all at a trifling expense.” Fancy all this foretold by a poor Scotsman sixty-five years ago!