OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 305 



After many labors of experimental analysis carried on in person, with 

 more or less of permanent beneficial result, finding himself drawing to 

 his end, he seems to have become so profoundly penetrated by the con- 

 viction of the importance of ■ jjrosecuting tliis line of investigation in all 

 future time, that it prompted him to devote a considerable share of his 

 personal earnings to the establishment of permanent endowments to 

 encourage the work on both sides of the Atlantic. The purpose of 

 stimulating the ardor for future research in the same path was indicated 

 by his instituting a method of holding out to successful laborers a pros- 

 pect of rewards, to be distributed under the direction of Scientific Insti- 

 tutions known to him in Great Britain and America at that time, as 

 of well established character. These rewards, though not without 

 material value in themselves, were yet expected to derive their chief 

 importance as publicly conferring upon the winners the honor of 

 receiving, from the most competent authority known in the land, a 

 distinct public confirmation of the value of any discovery or invention 

 connected with light or heat, that might be adjudged to be promotive 

 of benefit to mankind. 



Neither was the donor at all mistaken in his prognostication of the 

 progress likely to be made in this noble field of investigation. Already, 

 and within the limits of the first century since his trust was made, the 

 results arrived at have infinitely exceeded the utmost limits of his 

 imagination. Even before his own decease, the mind of Fulton had 

 become big with the grand conception of the application of heat to 

 motion, — an idea which is gradually changing the international rela- 

 tions of the entire globe we inhabit. Not many years after, Morse 

 divined the equally grand project of applying the agent of electricity 

 to the immediate intercommunication of language all over the world. 

 Next in order came the discovery of the application of light to the 

 accurate delineation of all material objects. The advance yet making 

 in this latest and most useful field of labor would alone fully establish 

 the accuracy of foresight of the founder of this trust. It is precisely 

 in connection with this latest step that we have been called upon to 

 pass judgment upon an improved process which has been regularly 

 submitted to the examination of a competent Committee of the 

 Academy. 



I may be permitted. Gentlemen of the Academy, to remind you that 

 the application of photograjjhy as a method of astronomical observation, 

 like the electro-chronographic method of measuring small intervals of 

 time, is essentially American in its origin and development. On the 

 23d of October, 1847, the Messrs. Bond of Cambridge, assisted by Mr. 

 VOL. I. 39 



