COMMEMORATION OF PROF. HENRY A. ROWLAND. 749 



wholly absorbed in the love of nature and in the study of nature's 

 laws, and the whole situation was to his ambitious spirit most artificial 

 and irksome. Time did not -often his feelings or lessen his desire to 

 escape from such uncongenial surroundings, and. at his own request, 

 Dr. Farrand, principal of the Academy at Newark, New Jersey, to 

 which city the family had recently moved, was consulted as to what 

 ought to be done. Fortunately for everybody, his advice was thai the 

 boy ought to be allowed to follow his bent. and. at his own suggestion, 

 he was sent, in the autumn of that year, to the Rensselaer Polytechnic 

 Institute at Troy, where he remained five years, and from which he 

 was graduated as a civil engineer in 18T0. 



It is unnecessary to say that this change was joyfully welcomed by 

 young Rowland. At Andover the only opportunity that had offered 

 for the exercise of his skill as a mechanic was in the construction of ;t 

 somewhat complicated device by means of which he outwitted some of 

 his schoolmates in an early attempt to haze him. and in this he took no 

 little pride. At Troy he gave loose rein to his ardent desires, and his 

 career in science may almost he -aid to begin with his entrance upon 

 his work there and before he was IT years old. 



He made immediate use of the opportunities afforded in Troy and it- 

 neighborhood for the examination of machinery and manufacturing 

 processes, and one of his earliest letters to his friends contained a clear 

 and detailed description of the operation of making railroad iron, the 

 rolls, shears, saws, and other special machines being represented in 

 uncommonl} T well-executed pen drawings. One can easily see in this 

 letter a full confirmation of a statement that he occasionally made 

 later in life, namely, that he had never seen a machine, however com 

 plicated it might be, whose working he could not at once comprehend. 

 In another letter, written within a few weeks of his arrival in Troy. 

 he shows in a remarkable way his power of going to the root of thing-. 

 which even at that early age was sufficiently in evidence to mark him 

 for future distinction as a natural philosopher. On the river he saw 

 two boats, equipped with steam pumps, engaged in trying to raise a 

 half-sunken canal boat by pumping the water out of it. He described 

 engines, pumps, etc., in much detail, and adds. "But there was one 

 thing that I did not like about it; they had the end of their discharge 

 pipe about 10 feet above the water, so that they had to overcome a 

 pressure of about 5 pounds to the square inch to raise the water so 

 high, and yet they let it go after they got it there, whereas if they 

 had attached a pipe to the end of the discharge pipe and let it hang 

 down into the water, the pressure of water on that pipe would just 

 have balanced the 5 pounds to the square inch in the other, so that they 

 could have used larger pumps with the same engine- and thus have 

 got more water out in a given time." 



The facilities for learning physics, in his day. at the Rensselaer Poly- 



