PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE MECHANI- 

 CAL TESTING OF IRON AND STEEL. 



ENGINEERS have long recognised the need of testing 

 the materials employed in the machinery and struc- 

 tures they construct, but it is undoubtedly owing to 

 the rapid development of new materials that the question 

 of testing has come so much to the front in recent years. 

 Since 1852, when the first Werder machine was constructed 

 for the Railway Commission of Bavaria, the advance has 

 been extremely rapid, and the accuracy of the machines now 

 at the disposal of the engineer has led to more thorough and 

 complete methods of testing ; errors have been eliminated, 

 until at the present time the scientific testing of the strength 

 and other properties of materials is carried out in as exact 

 and careful a manner as in any other physical determina- 

 tions. 



This has largely been brought about by the establish- 

 ment of state testing stations in many places on the 

 Continent, all of them equipped with the most perfect 

 appliances and under the direction of most able investi- 

 gators ; the publications issued from time to time from them 

 are perfect store-houses of information on this subject. 



The establishment of such testing stations in this country 

 is perhaps neither desirable nor necessary, but it is decidedly 

 a pity that the great technical societies have not, with one ex- 

 ception, used their funds more generously in providing the 

 money necessary for research on many of the yet unsolved 

 problems of the strength of materials. There are now 

 several colleges in Great Britain possessing admirably or- 

 ganised laboratories under the charge of men capable of 

 doing good work in this direction, but hitherto their work 

 has been cramped for lack of funds to carry out what must, 

 from the nature of the case, be often most expensive ex- 

 periments. It can hardly be expected that the colleges 

 can provide from their generally very scanty funds the 

 grants needed for such purposes ; it is often as much as 



