268 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



which he wrote to me in Japan, December, 1874: "My dear Ayrton — 

 You will be very sorry to learn of the terrible loss which has befallen 

 us in the loss of La Plata, cable ship, with my nephew David King on 

 board. . . ." David King and I had worked together for Thomson. 

 I had seen them much in company with one another. In appearance, 

 independence of thought, and in many ways there was great resem- 

 blance between uncle and nephew, so that I used to hope that a corner 

 of the mantle of William Thomson might rest on David King. 



Thomson has been called an engineer. In creative power, yes — a 

 great engineer. But not in the forties, nay, even in the sixties, could 

 a university student at either London, Glasgow or Cambridge learn 

 what to-day is called even college engineering. Thomson had never 

 learned to make a working drawing; he designed in metal. We stu- 

 dents could not help him with the T square and drawing-board as we 

 might have done had we received the college engineering training of 

 to-day. He thought of a new instrument, a new method of accom- 

 plishing some result flashed on him, and he sketched in his pocket-book 

 a rough indication of what he wanted constructed; I took the idea, or 

 what I understood of it, in my head to Messrs. White, so it was not to 

 be wondered at that alteration after alteration was necessary before 

 the thing that was in Thomson's mind's-eye became realized in metal. 



But oh! the delight of those days! Would we have exchanged 

 them, had the choice been given us, for days passed in the most per- 

 fectly designed laboratory of the twentieth century without him ? No ! 

 for the inspiration of our lives would have been wanting. As pathet- 

 ically said, since his death, in the Electrical Review, " Le roi est mort," 

 but we can not add, " Vive le roi," for were the whole world summoned, 

 " no successor would there be." 



