HELMHOLTZ IN BERLIN 



romantic town, but no doubt also he yielded to the 

 entreaty of his friend with pride and satisfaction. 

 He had now raised himself to the position of being 

 the first physicist in Germany, and his fame extended 

 throughout the scientific world. The young army 

 surgeon, who astonished his friends twenty-four years 

 before by writing the c tract ' I (as it is modestly called 

 by himself and by Clerk Maxwell), was now, at the 

 age of fifty, in a position where he could give his 

 undivided attention to his first love physical science 

 a position, also, specially suited to his inclination 

 and talent. 



The years rolled on till 1887, when another great 

 change took place in the career of Helmholtz. His 

 life-long friend, Werner von Siemens, the electrician 

 and man of affairs, founded a great Physico-Technical 

 Institute at Charlottenburg, near Berlin, and Helm- 

 holtz was chosen as its first director. The object 

 of this institute was (i) to deal with costly and diffi- 

 cult scientific investigations not likely to be under- 

 taken in any ordinary physical laboratory, such as 

 those relating to standards of measurement ; and 

 (2) to undertake special technical procedures, includ- 

 ing the testing of all kinds of thermometers, con- 

 structed on the most approved principles, the testing 

 of aneroids, mercurial barometers, the examination of 

 all kinds of instruments for electrical measurements, 

 the examination of photometric instruments, and the 



1 Die Erhahung der Kraft ; or, The Conservation of Energy. 

 I8 5 



