KELVIN IN THE SIXTIES 263 



no contrivances such as would to-day be found in any polytechnic, no 

 laboratory course, no special hours for the students to attend, no assist- 

 ants to supervise or explain, no marks given for laboratory work, no 

 workshop and even no fee to be paid. But the six or eight students 

 who worked in that laboratory felt that the entree was a great privilege. 

 College laboratories for any branch of physics did not, as far as I re- 

 member, exist anywhere in London during my student days. Prin- 

 cipal Carey Foster started one in 1866 shortly after his appointment 

 as professor of physics at University College, since he realized that 

 making experiments was as great a necessity for students of physics as 

 for students of chemistry. And it was Carey Foster's pioneering efforts 

 to have a students' physical laboratory at University College, and his 

 description of what Thomson had done at Glasgow, which made my 

 mouth water and turned my attention northwards. Of course, the 

 accommodation in Gower Street for physical work in 1866 did not 

 differ much from what had existed at Glasgow since 1846, and cer- 

 tainly even in 1879, thirteen years later, Professor Cornu's students 

 at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, never touched a piece of physical 

 apparatus, although the cabinet de physique there contained all the 

 originals of Regnault's classical apparatus, or facsimiles of the appa- 

 ratus that Regnault had used in his investigations. 



Thomson's students experimented in his one room and the adjoin- 

 ing coal cellar, in spite of the atmosphere of coal dust, which settled 

 on everything, produced by a boy coming periodically to shovel up 

 coal for the fires. If for some test a student wanted a resistance coil, 

 or a Wheatstone's bridge, he had to find some wire, wind the coil, and 

 adjust it for himself. 



It is difficult to make the electrical student of to-day realize what 

 were the difficulties, but what also were the splendid compensating 

 advantages of the electrical students under Thomson in the sixties. 

 We were like a band of emigrants following our leader in wagons across 

 the prairies and the Eockies on the way into California in 1848. While 

 his far greater genius, perseverance, and endurance would enable him 

 to find nuggets, we perhaps might find specks of scientific gold. We 

 were proud to follow him, we did not expect or even know what the 

 laboratory luxuries of to-day would be, we did not need an Empire 

 State Express train to hurry us in Pullman cars along a line of smooth 

 level rails. 



If the instrument given us by Thomson to work with had never 

 been described to us — if its theory or even its use was entirely unknown 

 to us — well, there were no maps for the early emigrants going west- 

 ward to fall back on, they had to ford the streams for themselves, and 

 did not expect to find bridges already built to enable them to step over 

 every difficulty. 



