than has ever hitherto been
practicable.

For special objects, also, photographs can be sent by telegraph
through the use of the photo-relief in plaster of Paris, or other
suitable material, which travels backwards and forwards underneath a
pointer, the rising and falling of which is accurately represented by
thick and thin lines--or by the darker and lighter photographic
printing of a beam of light of varying intensity--at the other end, so
that a shaded reproduction of the photograph is produced. Relief at
the sending end is in this way translated into darkness of shade at
the receiving end. Any general expansion of this system, if it comes,
will necessarily be postponed till long after the full possibilities
of the codeword plan have been exploited, because the latter works in
exactly with the ordinary methods for sending telegraphic matter.

The keen competition between submarine and wireless telegraphy will be
one of the most exciting contests furnished by electrical progress in
the first quarter of the new century. Attention will be devoted to
those directions on the surface of the globe in which it is possible
to send messages almost entirely by land lines, and to bridge over
comparatively small intervals of space from land to land by wireless
telegraphy. Thus the Asiatic and Canadian route may be expected
shortly to enter into competition with the Atlantic cables in
telegraphic business to the United States; while Australia will be
reached _via_ Singapore and Java.

A great impetus will be given to the wireless system as a commercial
undertaking when arrangements have been perfected for causing the
receiver at any particular station to translate its message into a
form suitable for sending automatically. When this has been done, many
of the wayside stations will be almost entirely self-working, and
messages, indeed, may be despatched from island to island, or from one
floating station to another across the Atlantic itself.

Another requirement for really cheap telegraphy on the new system is
a more rapid method of making the letters or signals. The irregular
intervals at which the sparks from the coil of the transmitter fly
from one terminal to the other render it impossible to split up the
succession of flashes into intervals on the dot-and-dash principle,
without providing for each dot a much longer period of time than is
required for the transmission of messages on land lines. In fact the
need for going