HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



Further discussions in 1875-6 led to the resolution that the 

 earlier Industrial Academy should be supplemented by the 

 foundation of an Institute for Scientific Mechanics, a project 

 which was supported by the Ministers of Trade and of Finance. 

 It could not, however, be carried out exactly in this form, since 

 the Industrial Academy was just then replaced by a Technical 

 High School, which was to incorporate all the different Technical 

 Institutes, and the building of which was at once begun. 



Meantime the proposal to found a Mechanical Institute was 

 again suggested in 1879 to tne Minister of Education (to whose 

 department the Technical High School had meantime been 

 transferred), by the Central Board of Survey in Prussia, and by 

 the Mechanics* Union, in consequence of which Conferences 

 were held at the end of 1882 in the Education Office, and it was 

 decided to supplement the Technical High School by an 

 Institute of this kind. The results of these deliberations, in 

 which Helmholtz, Reuleaux, Forster, and Werner Siemens (all 

 members of the former Commission) took part, were collected 

 in a Memorial of May 23, 1883. In a special report Helmholtz 

 pointed out the necessity of combining a scientific department 

 with that of technical mechanics. 



In a further Memorial of June 16, 1883, the earlier scheme for 

 the foundation of ' an Institute for the Experimental Promotion 

 of Exact Science and the Technique of Precision* was proposed, 

 with important additions, and accompanied by a draft of the 

 proposed organization. Of the comments which Helmholtz 

 appended to this Memorial the following may be cited : 



1 1 should like to emphasize still more strongly the fact that 

 there is a whole series of important problems on the side of 

 pure science, which cannot be undertaken with the private 

 means of individual workers, or in the Laboratories of the 

 University, which are founded for purposes of instruction, since 

 their accomplishment demands costly accessories of space and 

 instruments, and the unhampered working time of experienced 

 and capable observers, beyond what can as a rule be obtained 

 without assistance from the public funds. Till now it has been 

 almost exclusively Astronomy which has been taken under the 

 protection of the State in Institutes dedicated primarily to 

 scientific research, and only secondarily to teaching the 

 Observatories. Despite the apparent remoteness of the objects 



