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1. The Essential Conditions for the Development 
of the Electrical Industry. 
The electrical industry works, to a great extent, for spheres 
of application of international extent. From the 
technical and manufacturing point of view this makes inter - 
national co-operation a factor of the utmost im- 
portance. In the following pages an attempt is made to outline 
the aims of such co-operation. 
A. International Rapid Communication. 
I. Telegraphy over wires. 
The international importance of telegraphy, as a means 
for the social and industrial intercourse between nations, was 
recognised from the moment of its invention. Every effort 
was made to place telegraphy at the service of mankind, ir- 
respective of national boundaries. Hardly 10 years after the 
first introduction of telegraphy (1858), an attempt, though it 
proved for the moment unsuccessful, was made to span the 
Atlantic by a telegraph cable. In 1866 a reliable connection 
was established between the Old and the New World. In the 
meantime, the telegraph systems in both hemispheres had been 
extended over land and sea wherever such communication was 
required. The great overland telegraph line from England to 
India was almost completed, and the world’s network of cables 
was being continually extended. The full realisation of the 
means for rapid communication, and the development of a 
closely meshed network of such lines of communication through- 
out the civilized world, necessitated as an essential condition, 
the mutual efforts of all nations for the general formulation 
of universally acceptable rules towards the extension and 
operation of this network.