210 RESEARCH 



jointly with Government support, afterwards took 

 up the work of our own committee, so that we have 

 here another example of initiatory effort by the 

 Association. Other inquiries of this type have passed 

 naturally out of the hands of the Association into 

 those of engineering societies, laboratories, and works ; 

 but it has remained for the Association, down to the 

 present time, to be identified with such important 

 researches as those on gaseous explosions (in reference 

 to internal combustion engines) and on complex stress 

 distributions in engineering materials. 



It must be fully realised that this chapter has 

 attempted no more than to point to a few examples 

 illustrating the wide range of researches which have 

 been fostered by the Association. Looking back 

 over the first decade of the Association's work, 

 Whewell (presidential address 1841) was able to assert 

 that : ' We have found the most gifted and eminent 

 cultivators of science in our own country, and several 

 of those of other countries, ready and willing to 

 undertake for us the office of exploring and interpret- 

 ing nature of extending and applying art. No 

 institution, however formed, could have hoped to 

 collect, as its active members, such a body of philo- 

 sophers as have gladly come forward to labour for 

 us, and have freely given us the resources of their 

 vast powers and matured skill . . . and we have 

 seen a co-operation of experimenters and calculators, 

 observers and generalisers, such as might satisfy 

 the wishes of Bacon himself.' 



That spirit of co-operation, engendered during 

 those first ten years, has passed into a tradition 

 not lightly to be broken. 



