Wire·less, a. Having no wire; specif. Elec., designating, or pertaining to, a method of telegraphy, telephony, or other information transmisssion, in which the messages, data, etc., are transmitted through space by electric waves; as, a wireless message;  a wireless network; a wireless keyboard.
 -- Wireless telegraphy or Wireless telegraph Elec., any system of telegraphy employing no connecting wire or wires between the transmitting and receiving stations.
 Note: Although more or less successful researchers were made on the subject by Joseph Henry, Hertz, Oliver Lodge, and others, the first commercially successful system was that of Guglielmo Marconi, patented in March, 1897. Marconi employed electric waves of high frequency set up by an induction coil in an oscillator, these waves being launched into space through a lofty antenna. The receiving apparatus consisted of another antenna in circuit with a coherer and  small battery for operating through a relay the ordinary telegraphic receiver. This apparatus contains the essential features of all the systems now in use.
 Wireless telephone, an apparatus or contrivance for wireless telephony.
 Wireless telephony, telephony without wires, usually employing electric waves of high frequency emitted from an oscillator or generator, as in wireless telegraphy. A telephone transmitter causes fluctuations in these waves, it being the fluctuations only which affect the receiver.


 wireless telephone
      n 1: telephony that uses transmission by radio rather than by
           wire [syn: radiotelephone, radiotelephony]
      2: a telephone that communicates by radio waves rather than
         along cables [syn: radiotelephone, radiophone]