[bovey] presidential ADDRESS 7 



A few years ago Professor Hall, of Harvard, attempted, by means of 

 thermo-electric junctions, to study experimentally the nature of the flow 

 of heat, both steady and cyclical, in the metal walls of an engine cylinder, 

 but his methods were open to serious sources of error. 



During the summer of 1895 Professors Callendar and Nicolson, of 

 McGill, carried out a preliminary research on the same subject, with a 

 Eobb- Armstrong simple non-conducting engine, using naked platinum 

 thermometers in the steam and thermo-electric junctions and platinum 

 thermometers in the walls. They obtained results which differed widely 

 from those of Hall and others, and which showed surpi-ising and unex- 

 pected relations between the phenomena. These results are now in course 

 of preparation for publication. 



During the succeeding winter an elaborate series of about fifty 

 experiments was carried out by Professor Mcolson, and it is expected 

 that these will throw much light on the above subject. The primary 

 object was the study of the relative plant efficiency of compound triple 

 and quadruple engines, but all the data for the study of cylinder con- 

 densation were also observed and recorded. In these experiments Prof. 

 Nicolson had the advantage of the collaboration of Mr. A. L. Mellanby, 

 a royal exhibitioner from the Durham College of Science, England, who 

 is to read a paper at this meeting on the results of the experiments, more 

 especially with regard to plant efficiency. These experiments were made 

 with the 100-horse power engine of the thermodynamic laboi-atory in the 

 "W. C. McDonald Engineering Building — an engine erected solely for the 

 purposes of such research. 



Although at the end of the first quarter of the present century great 

 progress had been made in ocean navigation, very small had been the 

 corresponding advance in the direction of more raj)id transit by land. 

 But in 1830 George Stevenson's " Rocket " inaugurated the new and mar- 

 vellous development in steam carriages. Europe and America have been 

 covered with a network of railways, which have enabled the Atlantic 

 and Pacific to join hands, which have climbed the wild gorges of the 

 Rocky Mountains, and are now traversing the lonely plains of Siberia. 

 In 1845 there were only 2,400 miles of railway in operation in Great 

 Britain, and the amount of capital invested did not exceed £88,000,000 

 sterling. To-day there are more than 20,300 miles, and in his address as 

 president of the Institute of Civil Engineers, Mr. Giles gives the gross 

 returns of the traffic as amounting to a sum of not less than £82,000,000 

 per annum, a sum almost as great as the total capital invested fifty years 

 ago, and representing the carriage of 900,000,000 passengers, 310,000,000 

 tons of goods and minerals, and about two and a half billions of letters 

 and parcels. In America, again, in the year 1845, there were only 4,377 

 miles of railway, while at the beginning of the year 1895 there were no 

 less than 232,755 miles in opei-ation, and the capital invested amounted to 



