6o8 



NATURE 



[October 20, 1898 



result discussions often extend over two successive meetings of 

 the Institution. Perhaps the organising committee may be 

 able to do something in this line before the next meeting, and 

 renewed efforts should be made to secure papers from the workers 

 in the engineering laboratories which are such a feature now of 

 all our universities and university colleges. All attempts to 

 secure such help during the past few years have met with most 

 disheartening refusals. 



The most important point raised by the President in his 

 valuable address was the suggestion that in order to enable funds 

 to be cheaply raised to carry out the deepening and enlarging of 

 our docks, the great railway companies should practically take 

 over the control of the harbours and docks which they respect- 

 ively serve. It was pointed out that every year saw an increase 

 in the over-all dimensions not only of ocean liners, but of the 

 ordinary cargo boats ; this means that most of the dock 

 authorities will within the next few years have to face very 

 heavy expenditure in enlarging and deepening locks and their 

 water approaches. Sir John doubted if this increased capital 

 would be able to earn a fair interest, and claimed that if they 

 were administered by the railway companies there was more 

 chance of both diminishing establishment charges and of 

 securing a sufficient inducement for the public to invest, on the 

 faith of this new security. He indicated ways of preventing the 

 growth of a dangerous monopoly, but it is very doubtful 

 whether the public would willingly see such an amalgamation ; 

 there is already an indictment against the railways of strangling 

 many industries by their excessive charges for carriage of 

 goods, and curiously enough Mr. Forster Brown, in a thoughtful 

 paper on "The economic and mechanical features of the coal 

 question," advocated strongly the State purchase of railways in 

 order to bring about a reduction of freight charges, and thus 

 to make good the ever growing cost of production owing to 

 deeper and thinner seams having to be worked. In the dis- 

 cussion on Mr. Brown's paper several of the speakers re- 

 luctantly confessed they were gradually drifting to State 

 purchase as a necessity sooner or later, but the President 

 opposed the proposal very strongly. 



The outstanding feature in the proceedings of the Section was 

 the constant cropping up of this all-important question of 

 facilitating the carriage from the sea-board to the factory of the 

 raw products of our great manufactures, and the return transit 

 of the manufactured goods. The extraordinary growth of the 

 manufactures and commerce of Germany during the last twenty 

 years, the still more rapid strides which have been made in the 

 United States during the same period, are forcing us to realise 

 that our supremacy is being challenged in every quarter of the 

 globe; this is the justification of the feverish haste with which 

 schemes are being pressed forward to enlarge our dock facilities, 

 to increase their equipment, and to connect our great inland 

 manufacturing centres to the sea-board by canals suitable for 

 sea-going vessels. The cost of carriage must at all hazards be 

 reduced, hence the papers by Mr. R. C. H. Davison on the 

 new works at Barry Docks (visited by the Section on the Satur- 

 day), by Prof Ryan on Welsh methods of shipping coal, by Mr. 

 Marten on a scheme for the improvement of the waterway 

 between the Bristol Channel and the Birmingham district, 

 and by Mr. Allen on electric canal haulage, and also the 

 paper by Mr. Brown, already alluded to. It was not so much 

 the mechanical and engineering details described in these papers, 

 important thougli they were, which interested the audiences 

 and gave rise to discussion, but the economic features of the one 

 problem common to them all — the cheapening of the carriage 

 of our raw products and our manufactures. Industrial legis- 

 lation during recent years, and the upward tendency of wages 

 of skilled labour render inevitable a reduction in some other 

 direction to counterbalance the increased cost of production 

 brought about by the above two tendencies. The two directions 

 in which this reduction can be obtained most readily are in the 

 increase of labour-saving appliances in the process of manufac- 

 ture, and a lessening the cost of the raw product by facili- 

 tating and cheapening its carriage ; this latter saving again 

 coming to the help of the manufacturer in the diminishing of 

 the carriage charges on the manufactured goods as they are dis- 

 tributed to our customers. Mr. Brown drew attention to one 

 other direction in which expenses might be cut down, namely 

 in the charge for rates and taxes, but here he was in reality 

 advocating something which would be of benefit to the next 

 generation and not to ours ; his claim that local loans should be 

 repaid within a shorter interval of time than is now necessary 



NO. I512, VOL. 58] 



would in fact place, perhaps rightly, a heavier burden on our 

 shoulders. It must in this connection be remembered that 

 much of the great increase in local indebtedness which has 

 begun to alarm some of our statesmen, is due to the borrow- 

 ing of money for remunerative undertakings, and that 

 as long as the general prosperity of the nation lasts, 

 such municipal undertakings as electric lighting works, 

 waterworks, gasworks, tram - Hnes, &c., are not likely 

 to become a burden to the community. The money sunk 

 in them is in a similar condition to that invested in 

 ordinary commercial undertakings ; the rate-payer pays no 

 increased rates in consequence of them, but in reality obtains 

 many absolute necessities of modern life cheaper than he would 

 were these undertakings in private hands. 



The visit to Barry, mentioned above, was a most enjoyable 

 and instructive one ; the extraordinary change in the district 

 since the Association met in Bath, when a similar visit was 

 made, was a striking object-lesson in the growth of the Welsh 

 coal trade. The new dock was actually opened at this visit, 

 since the three launches in which the party were taken round 

 were the first vessels to steam from the old dock through the 

 connecting cut (the dam closing this was only partly removed) 

 into the new dock. The splendid caisson for closing this cut, 

 which was worked with the utmost ease and perfect truth, and 

 the extensive equipment of cranes and appliances for shipping 

 coal were the objects of much admiration on the part of the 

 visitors. Mr. Davison's paper, well illustrated by lantern slides, 

 in which all the difficulties met with in the construction (and so 

 well overcome) were clearly described, had prepared the mem- 

 bers of the Section for this visit, which also made Prof. 

 Ryan's somewhat technical paper on the coal-tips in use in 

 South Wales a much more valuable and interesting con- 

 tribution. 



Monday, as usual, was devoted to electrical engineering, 

 when three papers on the application of the electric motor to 

 the engineering workshop, by Mr. A. Siemens, Mr. H. H. 

 Gibbings and Mr. W. Geipel, were read and jointly discussed. 

 The best discussion in the Section at this meeting rose over 

 these three papers. Prof. Silvanus Thompson arguing that in* 

 England, by adhering to the continuous current so rigidly, we 

 were dropping behind continental and American engineers, 

 who found no difficulty in their alternating current systems ; he 

 claimed that all the difficulties could be easily met and solved, 

 if we only faced them and made use of the experiences of other 

 workers in the field. This contention was hotly denied by Mr. 

 Parker and other speakers, and in the end the matter was left 

 where it began ; but, at any rate, it gave an opportunity of publicly 

 thrashing out once more this vexed question. The novel plan 

 adopted at Bradford of hiring out motors to small customers, 

 with the object of increasing the day load at the central station, 

 and also of stimulating small industries will, perhaps, be widely 

 adopted ; but it is very questionable whether the charge made for 

 loan of the motor is in any way sufficient to cover depreciation 

 of these somewhat delicate machines. Mr. Proctor, electrical 

 engineer to the city of Bristol, gave some valuable figures as to 

 the comparative cost of working steam and electric pumps for 

 boiler feeding, &c.j in central stations ; the economy of the 

 electric pump was very distinctly shown, especially at light loads; 

 the experiments have, however, hardly been of a sufficiently ex- 

 tensive character to justify absolute conclusions in all cases. . 



Prof. Silvanus Thompson and Mr. Walker contributed a joint 

 paper on electric traction by surface contacts, in which most of 

 the schemes so far brought forward were described ; the experi- 

 ments conducted by the authors on an experimental line al 

 Willesden were explained, and many of the details described by 

 the help of lantern slides. There was a very scanty discussion, 

 turning chiefly on the possible danger of such studs giving 

 electric shocks (the author explained in reply this was im- 

 possible), and on the question of the cost of fitting up such 

 apparatus. 



There were two papers descriptive of new instruments — 

 one by Mr. Coker describing a very ingenious instrument 

 for attachment to test bars under torsional stresses in order to 

 measure the small strains or twists, while the material was still 

 in the elastic stage. The instrument had been tried in the 

 mechanical engineering laboratory at University College, 

 London, and found to work well and with complete freedom 

 from all back-lash ; it is, however, too delicate and complex to 

 place in the hands of students. The other paper was by Prof 

 Hele-Shaw on a new instrument for drawing envelopes, and its 



