KELVIN IN THE SIXTIES 259 



KELVIN IN THE SIXTIES 1 



By Professor W. E. AYRTON, F.R.S. 



CENTRAL TECHNICAL COLLEGE, SOUTH KENSINGTON 



THERE is the stereotyped teacher — the teacher who is like a collec- 

 tion of phonograph records which the human phonograph rolls 

 out before his class in the same order annually — the talking text-book, 

 who instructs his students what it will pay them to read, payment being 

 made in examination marks — the type of teacher whose students, ma- 

 chine-made like himself, will grind out the tune, after the clockwork 

 has been wound up, by due preparation on the candidates' part, the 

 tune required written out by the examiner, and the clockwork started. 



And, on the other hand, there is the great teacher, the inspired 

 teacher, he who soars above scientific fashion, whose doxy becomes scien- 

 tific orthodoxy, who produces thinkers, not mere successful examinees. 

 Such was William Thomson, who became Lord Kelvin. 



In the sixties, after the British Association Committee on Standards 

 of Electrical Eesistance had been started, but was still in its infancy, I 

 had the rare good fortune to be one of Thomson's students. I, there- 

 fore, add to the many memoirs that have recently appeared a loving 

 tribute from one who was at the Glasgow University when the quadrant- 

 electrometer, the syphon recorder, the mouse mill influence machine, 

 and many other instruments that have attained world-wide renown 

 were being developed. Even after his severe illness in 1905 he never 

 lost his keen interest in science, but at the time I am referring to he 

 was not only a giant mentally, but of extraordinary physical activity. 



When he came into his class-room, a room festooned with wires and 

 spiral springs hanging from the ceiling like the rigging of a ship, he 

 had hardly given a thought to what he was going to talk about — if it 

 were Monday morning he had just returned from staying the week-end 

 with Tait at Edinburgh, and he gave us an enthusiastic account of their 

 talk, bubbled over with what they had been doing, was full of sug- 

 gestions about it, told us how the manuscript of " Natural Philosophy " 

 was progressing. We felt that we also had been discussing these points 

 with Tait in his Edinburgh study, and listened with rapt attention to 

 Thomson's narrative. 



At that time the advanced proofs of only a fragment of that book 

 had been printed off for the class. We saw the book grow, we felt 

 pride in its growth, we almost felt that we were helping that growth. 



1 From the Engineering Supplement of the London Times. 



