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have ultimately, from the very mn>Ht\ laid upon them, 

 become in reality men of science some of them. even of .-mi- 

 nence in science. 



Watt owed lii> memorable success in improving the strain 

 engine, mainly to his persistent investigation nt' the laws of 

 In -at and steam. Distinguishing himself, not only as an 

 inventor, but ultimately as a scientific discoverer, his name, in 

 later life, adorned the catalogues of many learned societies 

 while his scientific papers enriched their transactions. 



James Nasmyth, too, so well known as the originator of 

 those wonderful machine-tools for planing and shaping the 

 metals, which have so totally revolutionized mechanical engi- 

 neering, though, at sixteen, only able to attend a few scientific 

 lectures in the University of Edinburgh, on tickets bought 

 with models of steam engines which he made for the pur- 

 pose, and forced to acquire amid the din and bustle of the 

 shop most of the science he needed in his professional practice, 

 yet also, like Watt, in later life, stepped forth from the shop 

 into the halls of science, and even more, into the galleries of 

 elegant arts. An admirable painting of his in a late London 

 collection, a learned paper before the British Association, on 

 the cuneiform characters of Babylon, discoveries in the sun, 

 made with a telescope of his own construction, and pronounced 

 by no less an astronomer than Sir John Her.schel to be " most 

 wonderful," all attest that his great distinction as a practical 

 man was not achieved by ignoring science and books. 



And William Fairbairn, also, for the last half century 

 among the foremost ofEfiglish Engineers a man who began 

 life in poverty as a traveling millwright, and who at length l>y 

 his originality and enterprise, became in a sense, the father of 

 the modern system of mill-work a system characterized by its 

 light iron frames and shafting, its iron hangers, iron gearing. 



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