540 TECHNOLOGY 



sticks been rubbed together to produce fire before Rumford, while 

 superintending the boring of cannon in the Arsenal Works at Munich, 

 hit upon the true explanation of what becomes of work spent in 

 friction? Or, as Lamb humorously puts the case, in discussing the 

 origin of the custom of eating roasted instead of raw meat, "in pro- 

 cess of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our own Locke, 

 who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any 

 other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the 

 necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began 

 the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in 

 a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow 

 degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly 

 the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind." The veil 

 which hid the prospect, once dropped, is not our natural exclama- 

 tion, "Why did we not see that before?" What, then, is the necessary 

 step? Is it not the exercise of just that quality which the scientific 

 man has been blamed, and often with too much reason, for neg- 

 lecting? the divine gift of imagination, which 



" bodies forth the forms of things unknown." 



In his Defence of Poetry, Shelley points out the evil effects "which 

 must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating 

 faculty," and says, "whilst the mechanic abridges, and the political 

 economist combines labour, let them beware that their speculations, 

 for want of correspondence with those first principles which belong 

 to the imagination, do not tend ... to exasperate at once the 

 extremes of luxury and want." 



Out of such conceptions as these two, by the process just described, 

 the science which has received the descriptive title of applied science 

 and the general title of technology, has grown up, but almost uncon- 

 sciously, for, as a matter of fact, it has arisen far more from practi- 

 cal necessity than from thought-out schemes. We can see that it has 

 a twofold nature corresponding to the process referred to. 



First, we can learn by specialized study how to understand and 

 apply the principles of mechanics which is coming to be regarded 

 by some authors as the primary all-embracing science to the con- 

 struction of works of utility of every kind. We find this conception 

 distinctly recognized in the founding at Harvard of the Rumford 

 Professorship in 1816. In his will, Count Rumford reserves certain 

 annuities "for the purpose of founding a new institution and pro- 

 fessorship, in order to teach by regular courses of academical and 

 public lectures, accompanied with proper experiments, the utility of 

 the physical and mathematical sciences for the improvement of the 

 useful arts, and for the extension of the industry, prosperity, happi- 

 ness and well-being of society." 



