M. Edward Brauly, the well-known French electrician, who has lately been interested in the problem of wireless telegraphy, says The Scientific American, has perfected a device which will considerably develop communication by this means. It is called the improved Brauly radio-conductor. The Brauly coherer is already employed in wireless telegraphy, but the value of the new device is the discovery that any two pieces of metal, provided one of them be polished or oxidized, will serve all purposes of the tube. Any metal will suffice for this object. The result has even been secured with a common needle. The new radio-conductor consists of a horizontal plaque of polished steel connected with one pole of the circuit, on which rests a small metallic tripod connected with the other pole, the three points of the tripod being oxidized.

Lampblack, which for hundreds and hundreds of years has been the chief ingredient in dark pigments, may perhaps be eventually displaced by acetylene-black. The chief merit of the new sub-stance lies in its freedom from grease, and therefore in its more ready manipulation. It is said that acetylene-black is admirably adapted for the uses of the manufacture of printing inks. The high cost of acetylene-black is the only obstacle that bars its general introduction. A field is therefore opened to inventors in devising a method of producing the substance cheaply in large quantities.

The great pendulum, weighing twenty-seven kilogrammes, installed by Leon Foucalt in the Pantheon to afford a proof of the rotation of the earth, will soon be in an experimental state after having been laid aside since May 3, 1832, under decree of Louis Bonaparte.

Many of the steam railroads of the country are fully awake to the growing importance of electrical transportation, and have organized electrical engineering staffs to study the question as it affects their interests. It is the wise management that takes up this problem now and keeps in touch with this branch of electrical development that is moving forward with such rapid pace.