SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. l8l 



ti 'nance would be small as compared with that of gas or water 

 pipes for the conveyance of the same amount of power. 



Electricity, which in the days of Frauklin, Galvani, Volta, and 

 Lc Sage, was regarded as an ingenious plaything for speculative 

 minds, nnd did not advance materially from that position in the 

 time of Oersted and Ampere, of Gauss and Weber, and not indeed 

 until the noon-day of our immortal Faraday, has, in our own 

 times, grown to be the swift messenger by which our thoughts can 

 be flashed either overland or through the depths of the sea to 

 disi imces, circumscribed only by terrestrial limits. It is known to 

 be capable of transmitting, not only language expressed in con- 

 ventional cypher, but facsimile copies of our drawings and hand- 

 writing, and at the present day even the sounds of our voices, and 

 of resuscitating the same from mechanical records long after the 

 speaker has passed away. In the arts it plays already an important 

 part through the creation by Jacobi of the galvano-plastic process, 

 and in further extension of the same principle it is rapidly becom- 

 ing an important agent in the carrying out of metallurgical 

 processes upon a large scale. It has now appeared as the formid- 

 able rival of gas and oil for the production of light, and, unlike 

 those inferior agents, it asserts its higher nature in rivalling solar 

 light for the production of photographic images ; and finally it 

 enters the ranks as a rival of the steam-engine for the transmission 

 and utilisation of mechanical power. 



Who could doubt under these circumstances that there remains 

 an ample field for the exercise of the ingenuity and enterprise of 

 the members of that Society I have just had the honour of 

 addressing ? 



