electricity for the purpose, and distances up to four miles were tried. In 1774 Lesage of Geneva proposed 26 wires in earthenware pipes with pairs of pith-balls at the end of each wire, which flew apart when the conductor of a frictional machine was brought near the other end of the wire. A current of electricity was unknown until Galvani's discovery in 1789, and Volta's pile was first constructed in 1792. Carlisle in 1800 found that water was decomposed by passing the current from a Volta pile through it, and this was the basis of the telegraph proposed by Sömmering in 1809, in which 26 wires ended in 26 metallic points arranged in a row along the bottom of a kind of aquarium. By means of a lettered keyboard at the sending end the current could be applied to any wire, and a stream of bubbles caused to rise from the appropriate point, each point being duly labelled with its appropriate letter. The magnetic effect of the electric current was discovered in 1819, and immediately replaced the previous methods in efforts to develop an electric telegraph; except for the attempts to make a high-speed chemical telegraph, all subsequent telegraph systems have employed the magnetic effect of the current. A great many of the fundamental inventions of telegraphy were made in the thirties; the list includes the needle instrument of Cooke and Wheatstone, the sounder of Henry, the dot-and-dash inker of Morse, and the use of the earth as a return by Steinheil. Although the needle instrument is now absolete, the sounder and Morse inker are still commonly employed. Many have been the devices for increasing the amount of traffic which can be worked over a single line, either by the simultaneous use of the line by a number of operators, as in the quadruplex and multiplex systems, or by punching the messages on paper tapes, which can then be fed into an automatic transmitter working at a speed ten to twenty times that attainable by a manual operator. In the most up-to-date systems the perforation of the tape is done by the operators working an ordinary typewriter keyboard, and the received message is printed in ordinary type, a single wire carrying eight messages simultaneously, four in either direction, at a speed of 40 words per minute.

The need for telegraphic communication between countries separated by water was so much the greater because of the slowness of other means of communication, but the difficulties in laying and maintaining 2,000 miles. of insulated wire on the bottom of the sea must have appeared almost insuperable to the early workers; fortunately, however, there were men who had the necessary vision and courage. The flimsiness of the early cables suggests that the pioneers underestimated the magnitude of the problem which faced them, which was perhaps fortunate. A cable was laid between Dover and Calais in 1850; it lived only a single day, but it was replaced in the following year by a successful cable.

The first cable was laid across the Atlantic in 1858, and, although in the light of our present knowledge we know that it could not have had a very long life, its failure after a few weeks of preliminary communication was primarily due to misuse owing to the ignorance of those in charge. Although much costly experience had been gained in the laying of cables in various parts of the world since this first attempt to span the Atlantic, the success of the second Atlantic cable in 1866 was largely due to the scientific ability of Kelvin and to his enthusiastic and untiring application to the project at every stage of the manufacture and laying of the cable. In addition to this, he not only designed the receiving instruments, but

superintended their manufacture in Glasgow and their installation and operation. The success of the Atlantic cable was to a large extent a personal triumph for Lord Kelvin. Although numerous improvements have been made in the details of cable manufacture and in the transmitting and receiving apparatus, no outstanding change has been made in recent years in the methods of submarine telegraphy.

Turning to another branch of electrical communication, it is no exaggeration to say that modern business life has been revolutionised by the telephone, which will shortly celebrate its jubilee, for it was in 1876 that Graham Bell invented the magnetic telephone receiver, although others, notably Reis, had been working at the problem since 1861. Bell showed his telephone in operation at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, and Kelvin, who was one of the judges, brought one back with him and demonstrated it to Section A of the British Association, at its meeting in Glasgow in the autumn of 1876.

A successful telephone system requires much more than efficient transmitters and receivers, and the great development which has taken place has been largely a matter of improvement in the design of the many elements that go to make up a telephone exchange. The modern manual central-battery exchange, in which one has only to lift his receiver to call the operator and be connected in a few seconds to any one of 10,000 other subscribers, is a marvel of ingenuity and construction. But this is now gradually being replaced by the greater marvel of the automatic system, in which the operator is eliminated and the subscriber automatically makes his own connection to the desired subscriber. Attention should be drawn to two outstanding inventions in the actual transmission of telephony over long distances, viz., loading and repeaters. It was Oliver Heaviside who in 1885 proposed to improve the range by increasing the inductance of the line. Although this revolutionary suggestion fell on deaf ears for fifteen years, it ultimately proved to be one of the great inventions of telephony; it is of special importance in underground and submarine telephone cables, the electrostatic capacity of which otherwise seriously limits the range. The other outstanding novelty is the introduction of repeaters at intermediate points in long telephone lines. These repeaters are specialised types of low-frequency amplifiers; they were made commercially possible by the invention and perfection of the three-electrode thermionic valve. The attenuated speech currents arriving at the end of a section of line are amplified and thus given a new lease of life before being passed on to the new section. By using a large number of such repeating stations, telephonic communication has been established between New York and San Francisco. But in addition to making such long-distance communication possible, the use of repeaters enables medium distances to be bridged by relatively cheap lines of high attenuation.

One important application of telephony which is not generally known is in the control of transport; the advantage to be gained by controlling the whole railway traffic of a large district from a central office need only be mentioned to be appreciated.

Turning now to radio telegraphy and telephony, one cannot but marvel at the rapidity of its development and the inroad that it has made during the last two or three years on the domestic life of the whole civilised world. The theory of Clerk Maxwell in 1864 and the laboratory experiments of

Hertz in 1888 found their first practical application in Marconi's Italian experiments in 1895 and his demonstrations in England during the following year. Much of the rapid progress was due to his perseverance, vision, and courage in perfecting apparatus for short-distance work, and simultaneously experimenting over long distances, and thus, in the year 1901, settling by actual demonstration across the Atlantic the vexed question as to whether the waves would pass around the earth over distances of several thousand kilometres or go off into space.

The accomplishment of long-distance communication bristled with difficulties, largely due to unsuspected atmospheric effects which are still little understood; but such progress has been made and is continually being made that one dare not now adopt an incredulous attitude to the wildest dreams or forecasts of what is to be accomplished by wireless.' The commonplace facts of to-day would have appeared beyond the bounds of possibility ten or twenty years ago.

I have attempted to trace, in a necessarily somewhat superficial, but, I trust, none the less interesting, manner the development during the last hundred years of some of the principal applications of electricity to the service of mankind. In preparing this address, I have been greatly impressed by the enormous advances made, especially during the last thirty or forty years, in the mastery of man over the resources of nature, and in the use of these resources to the amelioration of the conditions of life. By the aid of electricity the energy of the coal or of the lake or river a hundred or even two hundred miles away is transmitted noiselessly and invisibly to the city, to supply light and warmth, to cook the food, to drive the machinery, to operate the street-cars and railways.

By its aid one can flash intelligence to the most distant part of the globe, hold conversations with friends hundreds or even thousands of miles away, or sit in one's home and listen to music and lectures broadcast for the entertainment or instruction of all who care to equip themselves with

what may almost be regarded as a new sense. Whereas thirty years ago a ship at sea was completely isolated from the life and thought of the world, it is now in continuous communication with the land and with every other ship within a wide range.

In no branch of electrical engineering, however, is there any suggestion of having reached finality; on the contrary, rapid development is taking place in every direction, and we can look forward with confidence to an ever-increasing application of electricity to the utilisation and distribution of the natural sources of energy for the benefit of mankind.

SECTION H.—-ANTHROPOLOGY.

HEALTH AND PHYSIQUE THROUGH THE CENTURIES.

ADDRESS BY

F. C. SHRUBSALL, M.D., F.R.C.P.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

A CANADIAN meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science is of special interest to Section H, since it was in this Dominion that it first entered upon a separate existence forty years ago.

In his Presidential Address to the Section at the Winnipeg Meeting, Professor Myres asked the question What happens to Englishmen in city“ slums "?' or, in other words, how are the peoples of Britain adapting themselves to modern conditions? Are these conditions producing modifications in the racial constitution and qualities of the nation? The matter

is one of importance to the older country, for over three-quarters of the population now reside in urban districts, and to the newer, since in the course of time industries must concentrate in favourable localities and close aggregates of population necessarily arise.

The trend of events can be followed in outline from demographic data from about the fourteenth century, though the records are scanty until the nineteenth century. The main factors are urbanisation and industrialism, the combined effects of which can be seen best, though in an exaggerated form, in those individuals who follow certain trades, such as the textile industry, which associate dense aggregation with, even at the best, unhealthy conditions of occupation.

Indoor trades and factory life introduce very different physiological conditions from those under which the young peasant has his being. These factors tend to depress the vitality of the incomer from the country, while those born in the industrial township would be exposed to urban conditions throughout early as well as adult life, and have the further handicap in infancy of the lack of care inevitably associated with the factory employment of the mothers.

In addition, selection may in time sensibly modify the distribution of the various racial elements of the population. Psychological factors, too, come into play, for some types seem to prefer the freer life of the open spaces and leave a district as it becomes more densely settled; while others, who have no love or aptitude for solitude, migrate into the growing towns. The early settlers of the North American continent were drawn largely from areas occupied by Nordic peoples whose early history was that of hunting and fighting communities. As the eastern edge of the continent became settled, it was this type that was largely represented in the pioneers of the West.

At first sight, the answers to the questions seem to be unsatisfactory, and it is common to hear of the physical deterioration of the people, though such pessimism is of long standing, being found as early as The Reflections of an Egyptian Sage.' It seems worth while to inquire if the change is real and permanent.

The most alarming data in regard to the position in Britain come from the Report of the Ministry of National Service on the findings of the recruiting boards during the last years of the European war. The recruits were graded into four categories, from those who exhibited the full normal standard of health and strength and a capacity to sustain severe exertion, through those with various partial disabilities, down to those totally and permanently unfit for any form of military service. The ages of those examined extended from eighteen to fifty, and the report therefore comprised such a study of a selected sample of a people as had never before been attempted. The survey of some two and a half million men showed them to be graded in the proportions1:

2

Grave disappointment followed this discovery; but a reassuring comment was made by the Commissioner for Yorkshire, who pointed out that grading for military purposes must, in many essentials, differ from grading in respect to fitness for civilian life, which, after all, is the factor of most permanent importance to a nation. For example, an exaggerated flat foot might render a man useless for general military service, and yet for civilian purposes be of trifling import. The same would apply to many minor disabilities that increase with age. No previous data had given any idea of the extent of age changes in efficiency, though it was well known that the period of maximum efficiency in active games was the ages under thirty. It is therefore not surprising that the numbers fit for severe strain should fall off after that age or that relatively few over forty should be fit for effective military service. There is no reason to think that this is in any way a new phenomenon associated with urbanisation, or that a similar census in past centuries would have yielded any better results; indeed, data on health to be submitted on subsequent pages suggest that larger numbers of fit individuals at the higher ages exist now than in any past time. Another and more serious criticism of this report as an accurate survey of the whole state of the population of Britain rests on the fact that it was only undertaken after some years of war, when the physical pick of the nation had already voluntarily enlisted.

The more valuable data are contained in the records of some 260,000 youths born in 1900, about two-thirds of the total number attaining the age of eighteen in 1918, the proportion in their case being (in round numbers) :