May 26, 1904] 



NA TURE 



SOME GERMA.\ PUBLIC LABORATORIES. 



IN considering the success of German manufactures 

 we are doubtless justified in regarding education 

 ii> the ultimate cause. But proximate causes are also 

 worth noting, and among these is the facility of access 

 to the fountain-head of science enjoyed by German 

 manufacturers. In England, as elsewhere, a manu- 

 facturer hesitates to take scientific experts into his 

 ■employ unless his industry be on rather a large scale, 

 but in (iermany, at any rate, he has for some time 

 been able to acquire the very best of scientific aid, as 

 it were, retail. This fact is brought home by a study 

 of some of the German industrial testing stations 

 recently published by M. A. Granger in the Bulletin 

 ■de la Society d'Encouragement. 



The first of these institutions on M. (Jrangcr's list 

 is also the most interesting, since it is not a State 

 ■creation, but rests, in essence, on the historically 

 English basis of cooperation. The laboratory of the 

 Tonindustrie Zeitung in Berlin, together with the 

 journal from which it takes its name, thrives upon 

 the support of nine associations of manufacturers turn- 

 ing out pottery, cement, builders' materials, S:c. It 

 IS housed in an admirably planned building of three 

 stories, of which the uppermost is set apart for the 

 business of the Zeitung. The laboratories are designed 

 for the study of such goods as bricks and tiles, terra- 

 <-otta, fireclav, earthenware, porcelain, and cement, and 

 their primaries. The clays serving as raw materials 

 lire subjected to elutriation, to determinations of 

 plasticitv, porositv, and fusibility, and to chemical 

 .analysis. In another department they are experi- 

 mentallv baked; here also Seger's cones are made and 

 furnace gases analysed. The testing of cements in- 

 ■cludes rate of hardening, variation of volume, resist- 

 .Jince to hammering, and tensile strength. Manufac- 

 tured articles, finally, undergo tests for mechanical 

 strength and for resistance to abrasion. 



The laboratory is entirely at the service of manu- 

 facturers not onlv for tests, but also for investigations, 

 including geological prospecting. To round off its 

 completeness, it carries on a patent agency and an 

 instrument business. .Altogether some fifty persons 

 are employed. 



Better known to the world at large is the Kgl. 

 Mechanisch-Technische Versuchs-.Anstalt of Char- 

 iot lenburg, now removing to the remoter suburb of 

 < iniss-Lichterfelde. Founded by ordinances of the 

 I'riis!,i,in Government in 18S0 and 1S82, it performs 

 investigations and tests for the various Government 

 departments (including railwavs) and for private 

 clients. There are four departments, with a supreme 

 director. The metals department is equipped for all 

 the usual engineers' tests and for photographic 

 metallography ; its chief glories are a 500 ton horizontal 

 testing machine by Hoppe, and a machine for crushing 

 tests, of which the monkey weighs 600 kg. and falls 

 through 10 metres. The other departments are con- 

 cerned with builders" materials, papers and textiles, 

 and lubricants respectively. The paper testing of the 

 \'ersuchs-.\nstalt is, perhaps, the best of its kind ; its 

 methods have been rendered familiar bv the book of 

 Dr. Hertzberg, the head of the department. 



M. Granger further mentions the Kgl. Chemisch- 

 Technische \'.-.\. in central Berlin, which is also kept 

 up by the Prussian (iovernment. It appears to be 

 pr.ictically a commercial analyst's laboratory on the 

 large scale. The well known Physikalisch-Technische 

 Reichsanstalt of Charlottenburg owes its maintenance 

 not to Prussia, but to the Empire. 



In this, as in other respects, Bavaria declines to 

 stand by whilst Prussia makes the running. Since 

 rSf)i, we learn, there have been a Material-Priifungs- 



NO. 1804, VOL 70] 



Anstalt and a Chem.-Techn. V.-A. in Nuremberg, both 

 State institutions ; though on a comparatively small 

 scale, they are in a flourishing way, and are business- 

 like enough to charge lower fees than their Prussian 

 analogues. \\'. .'\. C. 



DR. G. ]. ALLMAN, F.R.S. 



GEORGE JOHNSTON ALLMAN was born in 

 Dublin in the year 1824, the son of Dr. William 

 .\llman, who was professor of botany in the Liniversity 

 of Dublin from 1809 until 1844. He entered Trinity Col- 

 lege at an early age, and at the honour degree examin- 

 ation he obtained senior moderatorship and a gold medal 

 in mathematics in the year 1843. He was thus a con- 

 temporary of Samuel Haughton, who was first senior 

 moderator in Dr. Allman's year, and of Sir Thomas 

 Moffett, with whom he was so long associated in Gal- 

 way. Early in the 'fifties Dr. Allman was elected to 

 the professorship of mathematics in Queen's College, 

 Galway, one of the colleges affiliated to the then re- 

 cently constituted Queen's Universit}' in Ireland, and 

 at Galwav he remained until the close of his long life. 

 Soon after the foundation of the Royal L'niversity in 

 place of the Queen's University, Dr. .Allman was nomi- 

 nated one of the senators by the Crown — a signal testi- 

 mony to the high reputation he had made among his 

 friends and colleagues in the Queen's University. He 

 held his professorship for nearly forty years, when he 

 was obliged to retire in accordance with the Civil Ser- 

 vice regulations respecting the age limit. 



Dr. .Allman's most remarkable mathematical works 

 relate to the paraboloids (on some properties of the 

 paraboloids, Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, 1874) 

 and to the hisTory of Greek mathematics. During the 

 )ears 1877-87 he published a series of papers in Her- 

 inathena which formed the basis of his celebrated 

 work, " Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid " 

 (Dublin University Press Series). He also wrote the 

 articles in the ninth edition of the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica " on Ptolemy, Pythagoras and Thales. In 

 18S4 he was elected a Fellow of the Roval Society. 



Like his class-fellow. Dr. Haughton, Allman was 

 much interested in natural history, especially in the col- 

 lection and study of sea-shells. He was fond of chess, 

 and though perhaps he would hardly have called him- 

 self a mountaineer, he thoroughly enjoyed a ramble in 

 some mountainous district and had full experience of 

 the fascination the mountains have exerted over so 

 many men of science. 



NOTES. 



The delegates attending the assembly of the International 

 Association of Academies were entertained by the Royal 

 Societv at a banquet at the Hotel M^tropole on Tuesday. 

 Sir William Huggins, president of the society, occupied 

 the chair. Lord Goschen, in proposing the toast of the 

 evening, "The International Association of .Academies," 

 said that a hundred years ago the metaphysical interests 

 seemed to predominate over the interests of physical science, 

 but the conditions were now entirely reversed, and it seemed 

 as if physical science were going to rule the world. Nations 

 seemed to look to physical sciences as if on them their 

 prosperity depended, and the nation which paid the greatest 

 homage to physical sciences would be the nation which 

 would win among the nations of the universe. But might 

 he put in a plea at the same time for the moral and meta- 

 physical and the political sciences? He was glad to think 

 that in most of the academies there was a section of the 

 moral and political sciences side by side with the physical 



