404 Presidentship of Sir Edward Sabine 1871 



Armstrong & Co., in 1860, to offer him a place on their board, 

 and he eventually became its Chairman. He was recog- 

 nised not only in this countr}/ but abroad as one of the 

 highest authorities on the science of explosives and gunnery. 

 The Royal Society, into which he was elected in 1870, marked 

 the scientific importance of his work by awarding him one 

 of the Royal Medals in 1880, when Joseph Lister was the 

 recipient of the other. His services to the Army and Navy 

 were recognised by the honours of K.C.B. and a baronetcy. 

 He purchased an extensive estate at the head of Loch Fyne 

 in Argyllshire and there as a hospitable landowner he spent 

 the summers of his later years. He died in 1915 in the 

 eighty-fifth year of his age. 



Charles William Siemens, born in Hanover in 1823, came 

 to England in his youth. He possessed a marvellous 

 inventive faculty, which showed itself in the devising and 

 perfecting of various kinds of mechanism, such as the 

 water-meter, which became such a great success. Again, 

 his regenerative gas furnace proved a potent instrument 

 for further improvements in the manufacture of steel. 

 When he turned his genius to the applications of electricity 

 he took up the problem of transoceanic telegraph cables 

 and successfully laid one cable after another across the 

 Atlantic. His dynamo and its many practical uses and his 

 various devices for electric lighting raised his firm to the 

 highest scientific and commercial eminence. He became 

 F.R.S. in 1862 and was invited by the Society to give the 

 Bakerian Lecture in 1871. He was President of the British 

 Association at Southampton in 1882, and was knighted 

 the following year only a few months before his death in 

 his sixty-first year. It has been well said of him that 

 " there are few whose life's record will show so long a list 

 of useful labours." 



On 3Oth November 1871 Sir Edward Sabine retired from 

 the Presidentship of the Royal Society which he had held 

 for ten years. Sir George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer 

 Royal, was then elected in his stead. It does not appear 

 that the new President ever joined the Club. He was at this 



