THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE 75 



THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE 



For monuments of applied science it is necessary 

 only to look around : we need attempt no catalogue. 

 We may begin to realise its prolific and marvellously 

 rapid development from such recollections as these : 

 that Henry Bessemer first publicly described at the 

 meeting of the Association in 1856 his researches 

 which were to revolutionise the steel industry ; 

 that the commercial applications of electricity are 

 broad-based upon the work of Faraday, coupled with 

 the invention of the electro -magnet by Sturgeon 

 (1783-1850) ; that all the vast development of these 

 applications, at the hands of Wheatstone, Kelvin, 

 John Hopkinson (1849-98), Ayrton (1847-1908), 

 and many another, dates from a time substantially 

 later than the foundation of our body. This develop- 

 ment continues to the present day, when, for example, 

 the uses of telephony and telegraphy have extended 

 far beyond the conception of most of those who 

 witnessed early demonstrations of these wonders 

 at meetings of the Association. At the Plymouth 

 meeting in 1877 W. H. Preece demonstrated various 

 types of telephone. Criticism of the telephone ser- 

 vice in recent years has made play with the asser- 

 tion that Preece, being then an official of the Post 

 Office, called the telephone ' a pretty philosophical 

 toy,' which is not true : he did apply that stricture 

 to an early instrument by Philip Eeiss (1861), which 

 could convey only tone and not speech ; but he 

 recognised the potentialities of Graham Bell's system. 1 

 So did Thomson (Kelvin) and Haughton, who amused 



1 Dr. Alexander Graham Bell had patented his telephone in 1876. 



