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Deck the desk with USB fairy lights and flash up the wifi Santa Claus: Christmas is here. Looking beyond party antics and next month’s painful bills, this season of retail excess should set a new record for sales of wireless-dependent products. This is despite modern wireless communications bearing only a passing resemblance to Marconi’s miracles at the end of the 19th century. Morse and ‘wireless telegraphy’ have long since gone, and only the small stalwart band of radio hams still talk to one another over long distances.

Since its development during the later Renaissance, oil painting has been the de facto standard for ‘serious’ works of art. Notwithstanding the brilliance of JMW Turner’s watercolours, he knew the importance of producing his most significant works in oils, and even the Impressionists remained generally conservative in their choice of medium. Oils are conventionally applied with [...]