434 



NA TURE 



[Septembek I, 1904 



Waddell, and I trust this name may in the future be 

 used for the highest mountain in the world.' The point at 

 issue is mainly one of taste. Indian surveyors may see no 

 inconefruity in naming after one of their own late chiefs 

 the highest mountain in the world. But in this view they 

 are. I believe, in a small minority. 



I would urge mountain explorers to attempt in more 

 distant lands what the late Messrs. Adams-Reilly and 

 Nichols, Mr. Tuckett, and Lieut. Payer (of Arctic fame) 

 did forty years ago with so much success in the Alps, what 

 the Swiss Alpine Club have done lately, take a district, 

 and working from the trigonometrically fixed points of a 

 survey, where one exists, fill it in by planetabling with the 

 help of the instruments for photographic and telephoto- 

 graphic surveying, in the use of which Mr. Reeves, the 

 map curator to the R.G.S., is happy to give instruction. 

 An excellent piece of work of this kind has been done by 

 Mr. .Stein in Central Asia. 



There are, I know, some old-fashioned persons in this 

 country who dispute the use of photography in mountain 

 work. It can only be because they have never given it a 

 full and fair trial with proper instruments. 



Lastly, I come to a matter on which we may hope before 

 long to have the advantage of medical opinion, based for 

 the first time on a large number of cases. I refer to the 

 effects of high altitudes on the human frame and the extent 

 of the normal diminution in force as men ascend. The 

 advance to Lhasa ought to do much to throw light on this 

 interesting subject. I trust the Indian Government has 

 taken care that the subject shall be carefully investigated 

 by experts. The experience of most mountaineers (including 

 my own) in the last few years has tended to modify our 

 previous belief that bodily weakness increases more or less 

 regularly with increasing altitude. Mr. White, the Resident 

 in Sikkim, and my party both found on the borders of Tibet 

 that the feelings of fatigue and discomfort that manifested 

 themselves at about 14,000 to 16,000 feet tended to diminish 

 as we climbed to 20,000 or 21,000 feet. I shall always regret 

 that when I was travelling in 1899 on the shoulders of 

 Kangchenjunga the exceptional snowfall altogether pre- 

 vented me from testing the point at which any of our ascents 

 were stopped by discomforts due to the atmosphere. Owing 

 to the nature of the footing, soft snow lying on hard, it was 

 more difficult to walk uphill than on a shingly beach ; and 

 it was impossible for us to discriminate between the causes 

 of exhaustion. 



Here I must bring this, I fear, desultory Address to an 

 end. I might easily have made it more purely geographical, 

 if it is geography to furnish a mass of statistics that are 

 better and more intelligibly given by a map. I might have 

 dwelt on my own explorations in greater detail, or have 

 summarised those of my friends of the Alpine Club. But 

 1 have done all this elsewhere in books or reviews, and I 

 was unwilling to inflict it for a second time on any of my 

 hearers who may have done me the honour to read' what I 

 have written. Looking back, I find I have been able to 

 communicate very little of value, yet I trust I may have 

 suggested to some of my audience what opportunities' moun- 

 tains offer for scientific observations to mountaineers better 

 qualified in science than the present speaker, and how far 

 we scouts or pioneers are from having exhausted even our 

 Alpine playground as a field for intelligent and systematic 

 research. 



And even if the value to others of his travels may be 

 doubtful, the Alpine explorer is sure of his reward. What 

 has been said of books is true also of mountains — they are 

 the best of friends. Poets and geologists may proclairn— 

 " The hills are shadows, and they flow 



From form to form, and nothing stands ! " 

 But for US creatures of a day the great mountains stand fast, 

 the Jijngfrau and Mont Blanc do not change. Through all 

 the vicissitudes of life we find them sure and sympathetic 

 companions. Let me conclude with two lines which I found 

 engraved on a tomb in Santa Croce at Florence : 



" Hue properate, viri, salebrosum scandite montem, 

 Pulchra laboris erunt prsemia, palma, quies. " 



1 See, for discussions of this question, Proceedings of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, N.S., 18S5, vii., 753; iS26, viii., 88, 176, 257; Geogra- 

 phieal Journal, 1903, xxi., 2Q4 ; 1904, xxiii., 89 ; Alfihie Journal, 1886, xii., 

 448 ; 1902-3, xxi., 33, 317 ; Peiennanu s Mitleilungen, 188S, xxxiv., 338 

 1890, xxxvi,, 251 ; 190T, xlvii.,40; 1902, jflviii., 14. 



NO. 18 18, VOL. 70] 



SECTION G. 



ENGINEERING. 



Opening .Address by Hon. Ch.hrles A. Parsons, M.A., 



F.R.S., M.Inst.C.E., President of the Section. 

 On this occasion I propose to devote my remarks to the 

 subject of invention. 



It is a subject of considerable importance, not only to 

 engineers but also to men of science and the public generally. 



1 also propose to treat invention in its wider sense, and 

 to include under the word discoveries in physics, mechanics, 

 chemistr}', and geology. 



Invention throughout the Middle Ages was held in little 

 esteem. In most dictionaries it receives scant reference 

 e.xcept as applied to poetry, painting, and sculpture. 



Shakespeare and Dryden describe invention as a kind of 

 muse or inspiration in relation to the arts, and when taken 

 in its general sense to be associated with deceit, as " Return 

 with an invention, and clap upon you two or three plausible 

 lies. " 



As to the opposition and hostility to scientific research, 

 discovery, and mechanical invention in the past, and until 

 comparatively recent times, there can be no question, in 

 some cases the opposition actually amounting to persecution 

 and cruelty. 



The change in public opinion has been gradual. The 

 great inventions of the last century in science and the arts- 

 have resulted in a large increase of knowledge and the 

 powers of man to harness the forces of Nature. These 

 great inventions have proved without question that the 

 inventors in the past have, in the widest sense, been among 

 the greatest benefactors of the human race. Vet the lot of 

 the inventor until recent years has been exceptionally try- 

 ing, and even in our time I scarcely think that anyone 

 would venture to describe it as altogether a happy one. 

 The hostility and opposition which the inventor suffered in 

 the Middle Ages have certainly been removed, but he still 

 labours under serious disability in many respects under law 

 as compared with other sections of the community. The 

 change of public feeling in favour of discovery and invention 

 has progressed with rapidity during the last century. Not 

 only have private individuals devoted more time and money 

 to the work, but societies, institutions, colleges, munici- 

 palities, and Governments have founded many research 

 laboratories, and in some instances have provided large 

 endowments. These measures have increased the number 

 of persons trained to scientific methods, and also provided 

 greatly improved facilities for research ; but perhaps one of 

 the most important results to engineers has been the direct 

 and indirect influence of the more general application of 

 scientific methods to engineering. 



Sir Frederick Bramwell, in his Presidential .\ddress to 

 this Association in 1888, emphasised the interdependence of 

 the man of science and the civil engineer, and described how 

 the work of the latter has been largely based on the dis- 

 coveries of the former : while the work of the engineer 

 often provides data and adds a stimulus to the researches 

 of the man of science. And I think his remarks might be 

 further appropriately extended by adding that since the man 

 of science, the engineer, the chemist, the metallurgist, the 

 geologist, all seek to unravel and to compass the secrets 

 of Nature, they are all to a great extent interdependent on 

 each other. 



But though research laboratories are the chief centres of 

 scientific invention, and colleges, institutions, and schools 

 train the mind to scientific methods of attack, yet in 

 mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering the chief work 

 of practical investigation has been carried on by individual 

 engineers, or by firms, syndicates, and companies. These 

 not only have adapted discoveries made by men of science 

 to commercial uses, but also in many instances have them- 

 selves made such discoveries or inventions. 



To return to the subject, let us for a moment consider in 

 w-hat invention really consists, and let us dismiss from our 

 minds the very common conception which is given in 

 dictionaries and encyclopaedias that invention is a happy 

 thought occurring to an inventive inind. Such a conception 

 would give us an entirely erroneous idea of the formation 

 of the great steps in advance in science and engineering 

 that have been made during the last century: and, further, 

 it would lead us to forget the fact that almost all important 



