September ii, 1919] 



NATURE 



31 



heat radiated by the incandescent gases to the walls 

 of the cylinder of a gas-engine increases with the size 

 of the cylinder, the actual rate of this increase being 

 approximately proportional to the square root of the 

 depth of the radiating incandescent gas ; the intensity 

 was also shown to increase rapidly with the richness 

 of the gas. It suffices now to say that the heat in a 

 large cylinder w'th a rich explosive mixture is so 

 intense that the metal eventually cracks. The inves- 

 tigation shows why this occurs, and by doing so has 

 saved enormous sums to the makers of gas- and oil- 

 engines in this country, and has led them to avoid 

 the large cylinder, so common in Germany before the 

 war, in favour of a multiplicity of smaller cylinders. 



Science and the Wcur. 



In coming to this section of my address I am 

 reminded that in the course of his presidential address 

 to Section G, in 1858, Lord Rosse said: — "Another 

 objeat of the Mechanical Section of the association 

 has been effected — the importance of engineering 

 science in the service of the State has been brought 

 more prominently forward. There seems, however, 

 something still wanting. Science may yet do more 

 for the Navy and Army if more called upon." 



Comparatively recently, too, Lord French remarked : 

 "We have failed during the past to read accurately 

 the lessons as regards the fighting of the future which 

 modern science and invention should have taught us." 



In view of the eminent services which men of 

 science have rendered during the war, I think that 

 we may be justified in regarding the requirement 

 stated by Lord Rosse as having at last been satisfied, 

 and also in believing that such a criticism as Lord 

 French rightly uttered will not be levelled against the 

 country in the future. 



Though British men of science had not formerly 

 been adequately recognised in relation to war and the 

 safety of their country, yet at the call of the sailors 

 and the soldiers they whole-heartedly, and with intense 

 zeal, devoted themselves to repair the negligence of 

 the past, and to apply their unrivalled powers and 

 skill to ercounter and overcome the long-standing 

 machinations of the enemy. They worked in close 

 collaboration with the men of science of the -Allied 

 nations, and eventually produced better war material, 

 chemicals, and apparatus of all kinds for vanquishing 

 the enemy and the saving of our own men than had 

 been devised by the enemy during manv years of pre- 

 paration planned on the basis of a total disregard of 

 treaties and the conventions of war. 



Four years is too short a time for much scientific 

 invention to blossom to useful maturity, even under 

 the forced exigencies of war and Government control. 

 It must be remembered that in the past the great 

 majority of new discoveries and inventions of merit 

 have taken many years — sometimes generations — to 

 bring them into general use. It must also be men- 

 tioned that in some instances discoveries and inven- 

 tions are attributable to the general advance in science 

 and the arts which has brought within the region of 

 practical politics an attack on some particular problem. 

 So the work of the men of science during the war 

 has perforce been directed more to the application 

 of known principles, trade knowledge, and properties 

 of matter to (he waging of war than to the making 

 of new and laborious discoveries; though, in effecting 

 such apnlications, inventions of a high order have 

 Ix^en achieved some of which promise to be of great 

 usefulness in t.me of peace. 



The advance of science and the arts in the last 

 century had, however, wrought a great change in the 

 implements of war. The steam-engine, the internal- 

 combustion engine, electricity, and the advances in 



NO. 2602, VOL. 104] 



metallurgy and chemistry had led to the building up 

 of immense industries which, when diverted from 

 their normal uses, have produced unprecedented 

 quantities of war material for the purposes of Ihe 

 enormous armies, and also for the greatest Navy 

 which the world has ever seen. 



The destructive energy in the field and afloat has 

 multiplied many hundredfold since the time of the 

 Napoleonic wars; both before and during the war 

 the size of guns and the efficiency of explosives and 

 shell increased immensely, and many new implements 

 of destruction were added. Modern science and 

 engineering enabled armies unprecedented in size, 

 efficiency, and equipment to be drawn from all parts 

 of the world and to be concentrated rapidly in the 

 fighting line. 



To build up the stupendous fighting organisation, 

 ships have been taken from their normal trade routes, 

 locomotives and material from the home railways, 

 the normal manufactures of the country have been 

 largely diverted to munitions of war ; the home rail- 

 ways, tramways, roads, buildings and constructions, 

 and material of all kinds have been allowed to 

 depreciate. The amount of depreciation in roads and 

 railways alone has been estimated at 400,000,000^. per 

 annum at present prices. Upon the community at 

 home a very great and abnormal strain has been 

 thrown, notwithstanding the increased output per 

 head of the workers derived from modern methods 

 and improved machinery. In short, we have seen 

 for the first time in history nearly the whole popula- 

 tions of the principal contending nations enlisted in 

 intense personal and collective effort in the contest, 

 resulting in unprecedented loss of life and destruction 

 of capital. 



A few figures will assist us to realise the great 

 difference between this war and all preceding wars. 

 .At Waterloo, in 1815, 9044 artillery rounds were fired, 

 having a total weight of 373 tons, while on one day 

 during the last offensive in France, on the British 

 front alone. c,43,837 artillery rounds were fired, 

 weighing 18,080 tons — more than 100 times the 

 number of rounds, and nearly 540 times the weight 

 of projectiles. .Again, in the whole of the South 

 -African War 273,000 artillery rounds were fired, 

 weighing approximately 2800 tons; while during the 

 whole war in France, on the British front alone, 

 more than 170,000,000 artillery rounds were fired, 

 weighing nearly 3,500,000 tons — 622 times the number 

 of rounds, and about 1250 times the weight of pro- 

 jectiles. 



However great these figures in connection with 

 modern land artillen,- may be. they become almost 

 insignificant when compared with those in respect of 

 a modern naval battle squadron. The Queen FJha- 

 beth when firing all her guns discharges 18 tons of 

 metal and develops 1,870,000 foot-tons of energy. 

 She is capable of repeating! this discharge once every 

 minute, and when doing so develops bv her guns 

 an average of 127,000 effective h.p., or more than 

 one-an:l-a-half times the power of her propelling 

 machinery; and this energy is five times greater 

 than the maximum average energy developed on the 

 Western Front bv British guns. Furthermore, if all 

 her guns were fired simultaneously, they would for 

 the instant be developing energy at the rate of 

 13,132,000 h.p. From these figures we can form some 

 conception of the vast destructive energy developed 

 in a modern naval battle. 



Engineering and the War. 

 With regard to the many important engineering 

 developments made during the war, several papers 

 by authorities are announced in the syllabus of papers 



