SIX WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 363 



ratio of five to one. To produce a ton of steel at the present time 

 IVnin the ore takes no more than about three tons of coal to put 

 it into the form of rail or tyre. 



These are instances showing how much waste can be prevented 

 by proper direction of the working of machinery, and of thought, 

 to the development of the processes by which these effects are to be 

 produced. At the bottom of these improvements must always be 

 Si'k'iiee ; in fact any improvement that is not the outcome of first 

 scientific principles cannot be trusted. If it is an improvement 

 that is merely the result of rule of thumb, or of a kind of rough 

 observation of the working of machines and their effects, it gene- 

 rally leads to a very partial and very doubtful result, applicable 

 only to the particular instance. Whereas it is always applicable 

 when founded on those first principles in science that should be, 

 and no doubt are, taught at this school of science. It is by the 

 thorough comprehension of those first principles and their appli- 

 cation that the great revolutionising inventions of the present time 

 have been brought about. 



There is great room for the saving of energy in various forms. 

 We do not depend exclusively upon coal for the power and the 

 heat we require ; we have great stores of force the outcome of the 

 solar radiations from day to day upon our earth, in the form of 

 water power, of wind, and of tidal action. All these can, and no 

 doubt will in time, be made useful for our purposes. I was only 

 lately paying a visit to my friend Sir William Armstrong, and 

 there saw that he had placed one of our dynamo machines at a 

 distance of a mile from his house under a waterfall. By this 

 means his house was lighted by electricity. There was a brook 

 which had run to waste from time immemorial, and now by a very 

 simple arrangement it had been made available to light a large 

 house entirely by electricity. How great that waste has been 

 through the ages during which that brook has flowed, which is 

 now utilised. During the daytime, when the light is not required, 

 the same electric energy produced from the waterfall is made 

 available for turning a lathe, in turning planing machines, and for 

 other mechanical purposes. 



At my own farm near Tunbridge Wells I have not the advan- 

 tage of a waterfall, but there also I have been experimenting with 

 another form of energy that produced by the steam-engine but 



