174 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



matters to wliicli you now give a very large space, wliicli could not 

 have had even so much as a mention in the earlier list. One of these, 

 for instance, is the sewing machine, which, within twenty years, has 

 grown to be a great manufacture, of which the competing varieties 

 are almost countless, and which has profoundly modified every indus- 

 try dependent on the needle throughout the world. You give at 

 present an entire saloon to this intei-esting machine, and crowds of 

 admiring spectators are constantly surrounding the operators. An 

 industrial exposition without the sewing machine would seem to us 

 now, deficient in one of the most attractive of its proper features, 

 yet thirty years ago you had no sewing machine, for in 1839 no such 

 machine existed. Another illustration of the same kind I find in 

 photograph3\ The art of photography bridges so completely tlie 

 inter\-al between the useful and ornamental arts, that it is difficult to 

 decide whether its value is not even greater for purposes of utility 

 than for those of mere embellishment. The most familiar use of 

 photography as the art of portraiture is conspicuously represented on 

 your walls at the present time. In the examples exhibited will be 

 found striking evidence of the important improvement which has 

 been made in this branch of the art in recent years. But photo- 

 graphy is now the efficient handmaid of many of the arts which are 

 strictly industrial. As auxiliary to lithography and printing, it 

 furnishes the means of rapidly and cheaply reproducing printed 

 hooks without any resort to typography. It aids the wood engi-aver, 

 by fixing promptly on his block the lines which he is to follow with 

 his burin. In • the ceramic arts it fixes expeditiously the designs 

 which are to be burned into the biscuit. The engineer, the architect, 

 the surveyor employ it for multiplying their drawings, or for enlarg- 

 ing or reducinir the scale. In the coast survey office of the United 

 States, it has been for many years in daily use, in the preparation for 

 the engraver of the various charts published for the use of our navi- 

 gators. It is hardly necessary to advert to the value of this process 

 in acquainting us with all tlfat is curious and interesting in art, in 

 architecture and in natural scenery throughout the world. Photo- 

 graphy and the stereoscope united annihilate distance, and place us with 

 equal facility in the presence of tlie ices of the pole, or amid the 

 burning sands of the tropical deserts. Photography has also become 

 of inestimable value, in facilitating the investigations of the historian, 

 the archaeologist, and the philologist. Treasured manuscripts which 

 it is not permitted to withdrawfrom their depositories for critical study 



