November 8, 1900] 



NATURE 



41 



Each of the annual prizes established by the will will be 

 awarded at least once in the course of every period of five years, 

 commencing with the year immediately following that in which 

 the Nobel endowment enters on its functions, and the sum total 

 of a prize thus awarded will in no case be less than 60 per cent, 

 of the part of the yearly revenues disposable for the distribution 

 of the prizes ; neither can it be divided into more than three 

 prizes at the most. 



Immediately after the approval by the King of the statute of 

 endowment, the corporations will designate the stipulated 

 number of representatives, who will assemble at Stockholm and 

 elect the members of the board of administration, who will have 

 the management of the endowment fund at the beginning of the 

 year 1901. The executors of the will will take appropriate 

 measures to terminate the settlement of the succession. The 

 first distribution of prizes for all sections will take place, if pos- 

 sible, in 1901. From the endowment resources will be 

 deducted : First, a sum of 300,000 crowns (16,000/.) for each 

 section — that is, 1,500,000 crowns (80,400/.) in all — which, 

 with the interest commencing from January i, 1900, will be 

 used to cover, in proportion, the expenses of the organisation of 

 the Nobel institutes in addition to the sum the board of adminis- 

 tration shall judge necessary for the acquisition of a special site 

 destined for the administration of the endowment and including 

 a hall for its meetings. 



The right of presenting proposals for prizes belongs to — 



(i) Native and foreign members of the Royal Academy of 

 Sciences. (2) Members of the Nobel committees for natural 

 philosophy and chemistry. (3) Professors who have received 

 the Nobel prize of the Academy of Science. (4) Ordinary and 

 extraordinary professors of natural sciences and chemistry in the 

 Universities of Upsala, Lund, Christiania, Copenhagen and 

 Helsingfcirs, in the Carolin Institute of Medicine and Surgery, 

 the Superior Technical Royal School, as well as to the professors 

 of the same sciences in the Stockholm High School. (5) 

 Incumbents of corresponding chairs of at least six universities or 

 high-schools, which the Academy of Science will select, taking 

 care to divide them suitably between the different countries and 

 their universities. (6) Learned men, to whom the Academy 

 shall judge proper to send an invitation to this effect. 



The invitations will be sent every year in the month of 

 September. Proposals for the prize must be made before 

 February i of the following year. They will be classified by the 

 Nobel committee and submitted to the college of professors. 

 The Nobel committee will decide which of the works presented 

 shall be submitted to a special examination. The college of 

 professors will pronounce definitely on the distribution of the 

 prize in the course of the month of October. The vote will be 

 taken in secret ; if necessary, the question may be decided by 

 drawing lots. 



The right to present candidates for the Nobel prize belongs 

 to the members of the Swedish Academy, the French Academy, 

 and the Spanish Academy, which resemble the Swedish 

 Academy in their organisation and aim ; to the members of the 

 literary departments of other academies, as well as to the 

 members of literary institutions and societies analogous to 

 academies ; to professors of aesthetics, of literature and of history 

 in the universities. This order must be published at least every 

 five years. 



ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AS A TRADE 

 AND AS A SCIENCE.^ 



T DO not intend to make this in any sense a report of the pro- 

 ■^ gress of our Institution during the last or any number of 

 years. I shall not, therefore, give any account of the exceed- 

 ingly good work done by Colonel Crompton and the active 

 service corps of our Electrical Engineer Volunteers in South 

 Africa. I shall not describe how v/e/eicd our American cousins 

 in England and France, or how they /e/ed us ; nor what a 

 wonderful success accompanied all that was attempted by us or 

 by them or by M. Mascart and our French colleagues, although 

 I cannot refrain from bearing my testimony to the great kind- 

 ness of the Prince of Wales and the British Commission in so 

 generously lending us the British Pavilion for our great recep- 

 tion, and .giving us the use of one of its rooms for our office all 

 the time of our visit to Paris. 



My brother has tried to get me to introduce to your notice 



1 Inaugural Address, delivered at the Institution of Electrical Engineers 

 on November 8, by Prof. John Perry, F.R.S., President. 



NO. 16 [9. VOL. 63] 



some novel ideas which have come to us during the last ten 

 years in our business of lighting the city of Galway from a fairly 

 constant water-power, using accumulators with a gas plant 

 stand-by. It has almost come to be a practical idea to produce 

 carbide of calcium in wet seasons and utilise it through the gas 

 engine in dry seasons. I was also tempted to discuss the use 

 of large gas engine plant at central stations ; and another of 

 several subjects in which I have been recently engaged has been 

 the magnetic effect produced by systems of electric traction. 

 But I have resisted temptation and have chosen a subject which 

 seems to me much more important. . , 



Your president's address is followed by no discassion. He 

 is, therefore, privileged, but his very privileges cause him to 

 address you with a greater sense of responsibility ; he may say 

 what he pleases, but he must be very sure that he has the best 

 interests of the Institution at heart ; the interests of the Institu- 

 tion as a whole, not the interests merely of a few members, and 

 least of all ought he to think of his own interests. Neverthe- 

 less, your president speaks not as an omniscient judge, but 

 rather as a very fallible, very prejudiced, one-sided man who, 

 because he has devoted himself to one part of the work of this 

 Institution, is certain to be unfair in his comments upon other 

 parts of the work. 



Your past presidents represent in this way all classes of 

 members of this Institution. You have had scientific men, 

 given some of them to calculation and some to experiment, and 

 some to both ; men who have advanced the study of pure science. 

 You have had practical telegraph men, civil and military ; men 

 cunning in land and deep-sea telegraphy and telephony ; men 

 cunning in railway signalling. You have had electrical chemists. 

 You have had manufacturers and users of all kinds of electrical 

 appliances. You have had men who devote themselves to the 

 teaching of electrical engineers, and who fully appreciate the 

 fact that no good teacher ought to be out of practical touch 

 with the profession. And nearly all of your past presidents 

 have invented things which are now in practical use. 



As each of these men has given you at least one address 

 written from his own peculiar point of view, his prejudices are 

 not likely to have done any harm to members who read the 

 other addresses. I know, therefore, that you are good-naturedly 

 prepared to give me plenty of rope. I can predict the twinkle 

 of amusement in the faces of some of my friends when they 

 learn that I am about to take up a subject on which we have 

 had many debates. 



In this address I mean to put before you this simple question : 

 Is electrical engineering to remain a profession or is it to become 

 a trade ? Is this Institution to continue to be a society for the 

 advancement of knowledge in the applications of scientific 

 principles to electrical industries, or is it to become a mere trades 

 union ? 



Of course, at the present time the outside public ar'=' willing 

 to regard membership of this Institution as a symb • some- 

 thing more than the membership of a mere trades union. 

 During the early growth of any trade, even such a trade as that 

 of the plumber, it was really a profession. And a common trade 

 may suddenly become a profession, if it suddenly begins to 

 develop, as, for example, stone-masonry of a hundred years ago 

 suddenly developed into civil engineering. Electrical engineer- 

 ing has been developed rapidly, so that in the past it has 

 certainly been a profession and not a trade. 



Again, we are an institution of engineers, and the general 

 public are willing to class us with other engineering institutions 

 — for example, the Institution of Civil Engineers. Now the 

 title M.Inst.C.E. is a professional distinction which represents 

 in civil engineering what F.R.C.S does in surgery, or M.R.C. P. 

 in medicine. We owe a great deal to our association with, and 

 recognition by, the Institution of Civil Engineers ; our meetings 

 are held in its rooms ; many of our members are also its 

 members ; our proceedings are modelled on its proceedings. 



Now this older Institution, governed by the best thoughts of 

 the best British engineers, has laid it down that its associate 

 members, that important class from which the higher class is 

 mainly fed, shall have passed certain specified examinations in 

 pure and applied science. I am not now suggesting that we 

 ought to adopt this science examination method of admitting any 

 kind of members to our Institution. I do not believe in the 

 wholesale adoption of methods of working from another society. 

 I am asking you early in my address to remember that this 

 greatest of all professional engineering institutions, governed by 

 practical men full of common sense, knowing the wants of their 



