SfX WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 273 



SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



An Address delivered to the Birmingham and Midland Institute in 

 the Town Hall, Birmingham, on the 20th October, 1881. 



BY C. WILLIAM SIEMENS, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., President. 



CONSIDERING the high position in literature and science of my 

 predecessors in this Chair, I feel that I have been bold indeed in 

 accepting the distinguished office of President of the Midland 

 Institute during the current year. I shall not attempt to rival 

 my predecessors in those literary or philosophic flights which 

 befitted their powers, but shall confine myself to certain sug- 

 gestive remarks flowing from personal experience of men and 

 matter, which may prove of some interest to an audience con- 

 sisting in the main of persons who, like myself, are intent upon 

 combining science with practical aims, but who, unlike myself, 

 have the best part of their career still before them. 



In venturing to express my views regarding the very popular 

 question of technical education, I shall run considerable risk of 

 disappointing some of its most ardent advocates, who may have 

 looked upon me, a foreigner by birth, as a staunch supporter, if 

 not as the living embodiment, of that particular form of educa- 

 tion that the Polytechnicum of Germany and other Continental 

 countries imparts to the aspiring engineer and manufacturer, but 

 which, in my opinion, leaves much to be desired, and is certainly 

 inapplicable to the condition of things which we find in this 

 country. 



The subject of education, and of science education in particular, 

 is one the practical and national importance of which it would be 

 difficult to over-estimate. It is well known that the Continental 

 nations have in some respects stolen a march upon us in providing 

 for the education of the young engineer, the architect, the manu- 

 facturer, and the craftsman. Colleges of higher and lower drirnv 

 abound where both science and practical processes are taught, 

 whereas amongst us the teaching of the latter has been looked 



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