4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



in winter travelling was difficult and often impossible, that the cost of 

 carrying a ton of coal from Liverpool to Manchester was as much as 40s., 

 and the postage of a letter to Newcastle was Is. .No marked progress 

 in any of the textile industries was possible for want of a motive power. 

 Watt's application of steam was a turning point in the history of science, 

 and caused an expansion so sudden and so far-reaching as to put to shame 

 the Avildest dreams of romance. Steam power began to be used in manu- 

 factures of all kinds, and production, thus rendered easy, was further 

 stimulated by the greatly increased facilities of transportation. Trade 

 took a fresh start, and hitherto undreamed of luxuries and comforts soon 

 penetrated even into the most out-of-the-way places. A striking illustra- 

 tion of this progress came the other day in a private letter from a remote 

 district of Africa, where a lady entirely isolated from civilization could 

 yet telephone to a doctor for advice. 



The successful utilization of steam as a motive power at once fur- 

 nished an incentive to improve machinery. The spirit of invention Avas 

 awakened and expended itself in devising machines, which grew in num- 

 bers and intricacy as the new conditions of life and the great increase of 

 travel brought out new wants to be supplied. 



In quick succession came Hargreaves' spinning jenny, Arkwright's 

 frame, Crompton's mule, Cartwright's loom, and Eli Whitney's separator. 



Some idea may be obtained of the enormous improvements thus 

 caused in textile industries and the consequent expansion of trade, from 

 the fact that in 1757 the exports of cotton from England were valued 

 only at £-15,000 sterling, while twenty-live years later the value was 

 nearly 200 times as great. Simultaneously with this expansion of the 

 textile trades, there was a great development in the mining industries, 

 due to the discovery of gold and silver in new parts of the world and to 

 the necessity of providing enormous quantities of coal to meet the demand 

 of the motors, which began to increase in numbers to an almost incred- 

 ible extent. 



The marvellous advance in the number and complexity of machines 

 is certainly one of the features of this century. This is very forcibly 

 illustrated, even to the most casual observer, by the magnificent collection 

 of Eeuleaux' kinematic models in the museum of McGill University. 

 These mechanisms give rise to an endless variety of interesting problems, 

 and one of these is dealt with at the prosent meeting in a note by Pro- 

 fessor Guest on "The Method of Mechanically Tracing the various Conic 

 Sections." . 



Every kind of machine seems to have been brought into use for the 

 sui)ply of the numberless wants of people who so lately took their first 

 lessons in luxury. We must now have our newspapers left at our door 

 twice a da}', so a linotype must do everything short of writing the 

 articles, and a press must give out, cut and folded, 25,000 cojjies of 



