Lindsay, for instance, in his project of communication across the sea, attributed to them a considerable role.

These phenomena even permitted a true telegraphy without intermediary wire between the transmitter and the receiver, at very restricted distances, it is true, but in peculiarly interesting conditions.

It is, in fact, owing to them that C.Brown, and later Edison and Gilliland, succeeded in establishing communications with trains in motion.
Mr Willoughby S.Smith and Mr Charles A.Stevenson also undertook experiments during the last twenty years, in which they used induction, but the most remarkable attempts are perhaps those of Professor Emile Rathenau.

With the assistance of Professor Rubens and of Herr W.Rathenau, this physicist effected, at the request of the German Ministry of Marine, a series of researches which enabled him, by means of a compound system of conduction and induction by alternating currents, to obtain clear and regular communications at a distance of four kilometres.

Among the precursors also should be mentioned Graham Bell; the inventor of the telephone thought of employing his admirable apparatus as a receiver of induction phenomena transmitted from a distance; Edison, Herr Sacher of Vienna, M.Henry Dufour of Lausanne, and Professor Trowbridge of Boston, also made interesting attempts in the same direction.
In all these experiments occurs the idea of employing an oscillating current.