 This important device, known and widely used for many years as the Carey Foster bridge, was presented at one of the earliest meetings of the Society of Telegraph Engineers in 1871.Foster had been one of the founder members of this society (the Institution of Electrical Engineers from 1888) and served as its president in 1880–81.His reputation as an expert in the practical aspects of physics was further enhanced by the publication in 1875 of his preface to "Introduction to Experimental Physics", a translation by B. Loewy of A. F. Weinhold's German original, "Vorschule der Experimentalphysik" (Leipzig, 1874).