330 



NA TURE 



[February 4, 1892 



building must be, for look how small the four-wheeled waggon 

 standing in front of it appears. 



The next three photographs show some of the provisions 

 made for teaching electrotechnics in Franklin Hall ; the elec- 

 trical laboratory, under Prof. Moler; and the dynamo room, 

 under Prof. Ryan, whose analyses of alternate-current curves 

 are well known to you all. 



I might show you photographs of the electrical laboratories in 

 Prof. Weber's new building for physics at Zurich, on which 

 ^100,000 has been already expended. In fact, my choice of 

 magnificent Continental and American laboratories has been so 

 great that I have hardly known which to select as specimens. 



But there is one thing I cannot show you — and it must re- 

 main for the exercise of your influence as representatives of the 

 electrical profession to make that possible — the British electro- 

 technical laboratories for education and research which are truly 

 worthy of London, the capital of the world. 



The training of such students as those at the Central In- 

 stitution must, of course, differ essentially from that of the 

 electrical artisan, not because we, or the students, expect that on 

 entering a factory at the conclusion of their college course they 

 will start, as a rule, much above the bottom of the ladder, but 

 because they hope in time to be able to mount higher. 



They are therefore taught, not merely to construct meters 

 and motors, use dynamos and engines, build a chimney and lay 

 a street main, but, as they are not to spend all their lives wiring 

 houses or watching a central station voltmeter, they are well 

 practised in calculating and designing, and they further obtain 

 sufficient acquaintance with the methods of attacking new pro- 

 blems not to be daunted when they meet with them in after life. 



But so strong is becoming our belief in the value of science to 

 the manufacturer, so anti-classical are some of us growing, that 

 there is great risk that the literary side of the education of an 

 electrical engineer will soon be wholly neglected. Now, im- 

 portant as it no doubt is for him to be quite at home with 

 electrical apparatus and machinery, it is no less important, if he 

 is to take advantage quickly of the progress made abroad, that 

 he should be able to read a German or a French newspaper. I 

 do not merely mean that with a grammar and dictionary, and 

 plenty of leisure, he should be able to translate the newspaper, 

 sentence by sentence, like a schoolboy preparing to-morrow's 

 lesson, but that he should have the power to glance down the 

 columns, gather the gist of the articles, and quickly see whether 

 there be anything new that especially concerns him. 



How many electricians are there in this country who can, for 

 example, take up the Zeitschrift fih- Instruvientenlmnde or the 

 Electrotechnische Zeitschrift, and look through their pages as 

 they do those of the Electrician, Electrical Rrdiew, and the 

 Electrical Engineer, during breakfast on Friday morning ? 

 There are, I know, a few — I wish I were one of them. 



And yet examples are not wanting of the scientific isolation 

 that is caused by not possessing that familiarity with foreign" 

 languages which is a characteristic of diplomatists and hotel 

 waiters. Take, for instance, the fact that, whereas manganin 

 was manufactured on a commercial scale in Germany, and 

 German resistance coils have for the last three years been con- 

 structed of this material with a temperature coefficient of nearly 

 zero, the vtry existence of this alloy was unknown to many 

 English electrical instrument makers a few weeks ago ; and 

 even now most of them are still unacquainted with the com- 

 position of manganin, and its peculiar properties, as well as with 

 the results of the extensive and striking experiments that have 

 been carried out at the Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg on the 

 temperature coefficient and specific resistance of all sorts of 

 manganin-copper-zinc-nickel-iron alloys. 



This Physikalisch-Technischen Reichsanstalt, I may mention, 

 is an establishment totally distinct from the Technical High 

 School in Charlottenburg, some photographs of which I showed 

 you this evening. The Reichsanstalt is not an institution with 

 students, but a vast series of Imperial laboratories, presided over 

 by Prof von Helmholtz, solely used for carrying out researches 

 in pure and technical physics. The investigations are conducted 

 under the direction of Dr. Loewenherz, aided by 46 assistants. 



We have no establishment in Great Britain at all comparable 

 with this Reichsanstalt. The original work turned out there in 

 electro-technics alone is considerable. Here are some of the 

 published accounts of researches immediately bearing on your 

 profession which Dr. St. Lindeck has been so kind as to send 

 me : "Hardening Steel Magnets," "Standard Resistance Coils 



NO. I 162, VOL. 45] 



for Large Currents," "Tests of Commercial Ammeters and 

 Voltmeters," "Mercury Standard of Resistance, " "Photometric 

 Investigations," "Compensation Apparatus for Use in P.D. 

 Measurements," " Alloys for Resistance Coils," and so on. 



Surely it is part of the technical education of the electrical 

 engineer to be taught how to read such pamphlets as these with 

 comparative ease ? 



A working knowledge of French and German can be obtained 

 without the necessity of learning to express oneself fluently in 

 epigrammatic French, or to imitate with facility the word- 

 building of a native German ; and with such a working know- 

 ledge the average technical student may rest content. But as 

 regards his own language he should aim at something higher, 

 and therefore the electrical engineering students of our country 

 should be, I urge, practised in writing — yes, and also speaking — 

 vigorous English. 



Only the other day, Prof Nichols, of the Cornell University, 

 was deploring with me the rarity of finding a student of electro- 

 technics who could write a decent report. The experimental 

 methods employed in the student's investigation might have 

 been good, the mathematical analysis suitable, and the calcula- 

 tions exact ; but the description of the apparatus and of the 

 results obtained would be scattered pell-mell over the paper, as 

 if the writer were quite ignorant of the fact that the style in 

 which a dish is served up is nearly as important as the goodness 

 of its ingredients. 



Why do you suppose that Huxley's portrait has nearly as 

 much prominence given it in the photographer's window as that 

 of a duke or a ballet dancer? Quite as much because he knows 

 how to express himself in terse and forcible English as on 

 account of his wide scientific knowledge ; because even when 

 writing about dry bones the flow of his language clothes them 

 with rounded forms. 



But, you will ask, how are we to find the time for all this 

 linguistic and literary polish ? has the electrical student of 

 to-day so many spare hours that fresh subjects of study must be 

 sought for to fill up his leisure moments ? 



At present much time has to be wasted at technical and other 

 colleges teaching students sixteen years or older elementary 

 mathematics and science, which ought to have been mastered 

 before that age. When the education of childhood is improved, 

 when the higher education of women is properly carried out, 

 there will be no need for male experts to trouble about general 

 training, for then children will spend less time at school and 

 learn more ; boys and girls will, as a matter of course, acquire 

 the foundation of modern languages and general education ; 

 and students at a college will be able to devote their whole time 

 to the special training — scientific, manual, linguistic, and literary 

 — which pertains to the particular profession which their special 

 tastes will generally have led them to select befoire the age of 

 sixteen. 



And just as methods of teaching applied science have been 

 developed during the past few years, so I look forward to the 

 growth of new methods of teaching what may be called applied 

 literature. For it seems to me that there is a want of breadth 

 in the view that because the study of Greek verse would be un- 

 profitable for a student of electrotechnics, and because he has 

 neither the taste nor the time to enter into the intricacies of 

 etymology and grammar, therefore the study of modern lan- 

 guages and literature, even as directly applicable to his pro- 

 fession, should form no part of his regular training. 



As well might it be thought (and I am sorry to say this view is 

 not yet quite exploded) that because a student has neither the 

 taste nor the time for the study of abstract mathematics, there- 

 fore he should be debarred from all work in a physical laboratory. 

 Well, if it be generally accepted that although a young electrical 

 engineer has no chance of becoming a Cayley or a Maxwell, 

 still he ought to be taught such portions of mathematics and 

 physics as will be directly useful to him in his profession, 

 why should the certainty that he will neither become a Jebb nor 

 a Dickens lead us to tolerate an inability on his part to speak 

 fluently and write tersely his own language, surpassed only by 

 his entire ignorance of every other ? 



Habits of scientific thought are highly necessary for electrical 

 students ; to be masters of their own language, and to know 

 something of one or two others, are, I venture to think, no less 

 so ; but the main result to be achieved, the main object to be 

 aimed at, with every system of education, is moral thoroughness. 

 For until every workman, foreman, engineer, and manu- 



