I. 



NOTE ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FLEEMING JENKIN 

 TO ELECTRICAL AND ENGINEERING SCIENCE. 



By Sir WILLIAM THOMSON, F.R.S., LL.D. 



IN the beginning of the year 1859 my former colleague (the first 

 British University Professor of Engineering), Lewis Gordon, at that 

 time deeply engaged in the then new work of cable making and 

 cable laying, came to Glasgow to see apparatus for testing submarine 

 cables and signalling through them, which I had been preparing for 

 practical use on the first Atlantic cable, and which had actually 

 done service upon it, during the six weeks of its successful working 

 between Valencia and Newfoundland. As soon as he had seen 

 something of what I had in hand, he said to me, * I would like to 

 show this to a young man of remarkable ability, at present engaged 

 in our works at Birkenhead.' Fleeming Jenkin was accordingly 

 telegraphed for, and appeared next morning in Glasgow. He re- 

 mained for a week, spending the whole day in my class room and 

 laboratory, and thus pleasantly began our lifelong acquaintance. I 

 was much struck, not only with his brightness and ability, but with 

 his resolution to understand everything spoken of, to see if possible 

 thoroughly through every difficult question, and (no if about this !) 

 to slur over nothing. I soon found that thoroughness of honesty 

 was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the moral side of 

 his character. 



In the first week of our acquaintance, the electric telegraph 

 and, particularly, submarine cables, and the methods, machines, and 

 instruments for laying, testing, and using them, formed naturally 



VOL. I. k 



