SKETCH OF SIR JOSEPH WHIT WORTH 553 



neer's sbop, for two years consecutively ; that he should be examined 

 in the appointed sciences ; in snaith's work, turning, filing, and fitting, 

 pattern-making, and molding, " as already established " ; and that after 

 1875 each holder of a scholarship should be required to produce satis- 

 factory evidence, by examination, at the termination of every year, 

 that he had made proper advances in the sciences and practice of me- 

 chanical engineering. Additional prizes were offered for the best evi- 

 dences of scholarship at the annual and final examination, so that it 

 became possible for the best of the scholars at the end of his tenure of 

 the scholarship to have obtained £800, and the others in proportion. 

 The benefaction was added to, in 1875, by the foundation of a number 

 of " Whitworth exhibitions." 



Mr. Whitworth was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857 ; 

 he received degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, and the University 

 of Oxford ; obtained, in 1867, for his collection of engineer's tools and 

 rifled ordnance and projectiles, at the Paris Exhibition, one of the five 

 " Grando Prix " allotted to England ; had conferred upon him by Na- 

 poleon III, in 1868, the decoration of the Legion of Honor ; was 

 awarded the Albert Gold Medal of the Society of Ai'ts " for the in- 

 vention and manufacture of instruments of measurement and uniform 

 standards, by which the production of machinery has been brought to 

 a degree of perfection hitherto unapproached " ; and, in 1869, he was 

 created a baronet, and became Sir Joseph Whitworth. lie suffered 

 for several years from the severities of the English winter, and went 

 every year to the Riviera. Two years before his death he had built 

 a winter-garden at Stanley Dale, to which he was confined for several 

 months ; but on the approach of cold weather in the fall of 1886, he 

 determined, although he was so weak that his friends saw him de- 

 part with much misgiving, to try the Mediterranean coast again. " He 

 leaves behind him," says the " Loudon Times," " a rej^utation unap- 

 proached in his department, and he was scarcely less remarkable for 

 the sagacity which he brought to bear upon great public questions, 

 than for the severity with which he saw his conclusions put aside by 

 men in ofiicial positions, whose minds were not mechanical, and toward 

 whom his feelings scarcely rose to the level of contempt. The char- 

 acteristics of his intellect were peculiar in that he was distinctly an 

 experimentalist as opposed to a reasoner. When a problem in mechan- 

 ics was presented to him, it was bis habit to say, ' Let us try,' and 

 he possessed the rare gift of being able to devise conclusive experi- 

 ments." His principal published book was a collection of " Essays on 

 Mechanical Subjects," including true planes, screw-tlireads, and stand- 

 ard measures, which was published in 1883. He left a large part of 

 his estate to be ajDplied to purposes of instruction in mechanical engi- 

 neering. 



