a. (sb.) [f. WIRE sb. + -LESS.] Without a wire or wires; spec. Electr., dispensing with the use of a conducting wire.
Wireless telegraphy, a system of telegraphy (as that patented by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897) in which no conducting wire is used between the transmitting and receiving stations, the signals or messages being transmitted through space by means of electric waves. So wireless telegraph, telephone, telephony.
1894. Westm. Gaz., 22 Feb., 8/1. Not only may man be able some day to communicate by wireless telephone with the planets, but [etc.].
1897. Times, 18 Sept., 8/2. An electric bell was rung at the lighthouse by means of the wireless current.
1898. Electrical Rev., 20 May, 688/2. The first installation of Marconi’s wireless telegraph system in Ireland for business purposes was made at Clara, King’s County, last week. Ibid., 22 July, 129/2. The wireless messages were sent from a steam tug, which followed the races.
1904. Act 4 Edw. VII., c. 24 (title), An Act to provide for the regulation of Wireless Telegraphy.
b. as sb. Short for wireless telegraphy, message, apparatus. Also attrib. and Comb.
1904. Times, 15 June, 4/1. The country [China] is full of wireless, and we are showing ’em a thing or two.
1905. Daily News, 28 Aug., 7. M. Witte admitted that my ‘wireless’ was correct.
1906. Daily Chron., 21 Aug., 4/3. The captain was absorbed in the ‘wireless’ room…. As he himself said, he was ‘so occupied with the wireless operations.’
1910. D. H. Bernard, Signalling, 33. He … requested the wireless operator to ascertain the reason of the strange procedure.
1920. Conquest, May, 328/1. Regular messages … from wireless-equipped vessels out in the Atlantic.
Hence Wireless v. intr. to send a message by wireless; trans. to send (a message) or inform (a person) by wireless; Wirelessly adv., by wireless.
1898. Electrical Rev., 17 June, 834/2. The first news of the resolution … was conveyed wirelessly to St. Thomas’s Hospital.
1899. Westm. Gaz., 6 April, 8/1. Touters may soon be able to wireless … from pole to pole.
1915. Morning Post, 10 April, 9/5. A French man of war, which had left on Sunday, was wirelessed to come back.
1916. Times, 14 Feb., 4/5. The watching British cruiser saw the manœuvre, but before it could wireless the news that the Germans were making for the East the following order flashed out from the admiral:—‘Jam the wireless; jam it like the devil.’
