18 
much on engineering developments and progress, that I think 
we, as members of that profession, may at such a time as this 
survey with profit the period covered between the accession in 
1837 and the present time from that point of view, and 
endeavour to recall some of the differences in various circum- 
stances which have so greatly affected the interests of the 
population. 
No one can deny that these years constitute the most im- 
portant period yet known of engineering, or that the work of 
engineers during this period has had most far-reaching effects 
upon the material interests of the inhabitants of these islands, 
as indeed of the world at large—whether those effects have been 
produced by improved means of inter-communication by land 
and sea, of sanitation, or of labour-saving appliances. 
The rapid growth of towns has occasioned a demand, especially 
within the last thirty or forty years, for urban railways, tram- 
ways, bridges, subways, improved pavings, and other means for 
facilitating intercourse between the different districts of our large 
towns. It has been the cause of a great development of addi- 
tional sources of water supply, of improved sewerage, of new 
means of lighting by gas and electricity, and, above all, has 
necessitated that minute and careful study of the laws of sanita- 
tion which has produced most remarkable results on health and 
longevity. 
Although a short time prior to the Queen’s accession, the 
Stockton and Darlington, the Newcastle and Carlisle, the Liver- 
pool and Manchester, and some isolated railways had been 
opened and worked by locomotives, and several railways had 
been worked by horses before the introduction of locomotives, 
none of the main arterial lines had been opened ; and it was not 
till 1837 that the Grand Junction Railway connected Liverpool 
with Birmingham, nor till 1838 that the London and Birmingham 
line was completed. The first through line from London to 
Scotland was not available for traffic till more than ten years 
after the Queen’s accession, and was then dependent on ferries 
across the estuaries of the Forthand Tay. Practically speaking, 
therefore, the railway system of these islands, which was many 
years in advance of other countries, has been developed in the 
Queen’s reign. 
At the date of the accession, though an American ship called 
the Savannah, with small auxiliary engines, had crossed the 
Atlantic in 1819 in about a month, such a voyage, if attempted 
by vessels entirely or mainly dependent on steam, was considered 
by high authorities to be a mathematical impossibility. It was 
further held that no steamer could face the monsoon in the Red 
Sea, and, practically speaking, steam navigation was looked upon 
as only suitable for short voyages across the narrow seas, or for 
river navigation. In 1838 the Great Western, of 2300 gross 
and 1340 registered tonnage, designed by our past Vice-Presi- 
dent, I. K. Brunel, demonstrated for the first time the possi- 
bility of the establishment of a regular service of steamers across 
the Atlantic, and the Great Western ran regularly between 
Bristol and New York for many years, the journey occupying 
about fourteen days. In 1845 the Great Brztain, of 3443 gross 
and 2984 registered tonnage, which was the first large ocean- 
going steamer in the mercantile marine which was built of iron, 
and to which the screw-propeller was applied, also designed by 
Brunel, marked a further important step in advance, and she 
crossed the Atlantic in about twelve days. By 1840, steamers 
were overcoming even the dreaded monsoon in the Red Sea 
and Indian Ocean. Nowadays, as every one knows, the journey 
to New York occupies a little over five days, at an average 
speed of 21 knots an hour by vessels of 12,000 tons,, with 
engines of 30,000 h. p. 
The mining industry, which again is specially an engineering 
subject, and on which the prosperity of our country mainly 
depends, has during the Queen’s reign made very great strides. 
In 1854, the total quantity of coal produced was 65 millions of 
tons, equal to 2°34 tons per head of population, and in 1895 the 
total quantity had increased to about 200 millions of tons, equal 
to 4°73 tons per head of population. The increase of production 
is continuous, and probably points to increased exports as well 
as to increased consumption in manufactures or traction. This 
large quantity of 200 millions of tons annually excavated is 
difficult to realise. If we assume a thickness of coal zz széz of 
6 feet, the total quantity excavated now annually would occupy 
nearly 21,000 acres, which is equal to twenty-five times the 
area. 
Prior to 1851 there was no submarine cable across the Channel, 
none to the United States till 1858, nor to India, Australia, or 
NO. £410, VOL. 55] 
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[| NOVEMBER 5, 1896 
South Africa till 1865, 1872, and 1879 respectively. Nowadays 
the mileage of submarine cables is 162,000 miles, the capital 
employed in them is 40 millions, and the total number of foreign 
and colonial telegrams is about seven millions annually, without 
reckoning those that are sent by the submarine companies with- 
out the intervention of the Post Office. 
This brief retrospect gives some idea, however faint and im- 
perfect, of what has been done by engineers during the past sixty 
years in facilitating inter-communication between individuals in 
this and other countries, and in the distribution of produce. 
Let us now glance shortly at some of the statistics of the work 
of the sanitary engineer, whose work affects the duration of 
human life and the enjoyment of health of every individual. 
The mean death-rate of London for the various decades from 
1840 up to 1870, when the main intercepting sewers of the 
metropolis were brought into use, was 24°4 per thousand. In 
1880 it was reduced to 22°5, andit isnow19'5. This reduction 
of almost five per thousand, which means a saving of life in 
London alone of 22,000 individuals annually, is very largely due 
to the work of the sanitary engineer, though, of course, it is 
also to be partly accounted for by better wages, better organisa- 
tion, and better medical education. 
Though much of the reduction of the death-rate in towns 
may properly be attributed to improved sewerage, I by no 
means think that we ought to look to that cause as being of 
equal importance to an ample supply of good water. In this 
direction immense progress has been made during the Queen’s 
reign, and it seems almost impossible for us now to ‘conceive 
London in its condition of 1837, honeycombed with cesspools, 
and largely supplied with water either from surface wells, or 
from the Thames at Battersea or Hungerford. 
Though gas for lighting was invented and began to be used 
prior to the accession, its cheapness and universal application 
to towns and large villages mark another engineering success of 
the reign of our Queen, and lately its application to heating 
purposes is a further most important step. 
I have spoken of the work of engineers in railway and steam- 
ship transport, in the development of postal, telegraphic, and 
telephonic inter-communication and in sanitation. These indeed 
are important successes, but what a record there is for our 
profession in other labour-saving appliances—in the improve- 
ments of spinning and weaving machinery, in lace-making, in 
the working of iron and steel, in the invention and perfecting 
of hydraulic machinery—the work and success of our valued 
Past-President, Lord Armstrong. Hydraulic machinery has 
done such wonders for the use and convenience of man in every 
department of manufacture and trade, that it is almost im- 
possible to conceive how even the limited amount of work of 
our forefathers could have been carried on without such con- 
venient means of the transmission of power as the accumulator 
and high-pressure water afford. f 
Again, what a field has been occupied and cultivated within 
even the latter half of our sixty years by the electrical engineer ! 
This subject is full of the greatest interest, but it is sufficient by 
itself for an address such as this, and I have no doubt it will be 
fully dealt with by him whom I look forward to welcoming as 
my successor. I have spoken shortly of telegraphs and tele- 
phones, and I can only further allude to and note the great 
strides already taken in the transmission of electric energy, 
whether it be used for traction, lighting, heating, actuation of 
motors, smelting of refractory metals, welding, or for electrolysis, 
such as in the production of aluminium or in various other 
branches of trade. 
With regard to traction, which is a seductive subject for 
enlargement, I will only remark that electric traction has now 
passed through the experimental stages, and may be looked upon 
as an accomplished idea. Without entering on the question of 
its universal adaptability for railways in general, we can see that 
indisputably it is eminently fitted for any underground railway. 
We have the facts that the South London Railway and the 
Liverpool Railway have been and are being worked electrically 
at this moment; that a French railway company have been 
working a full-sized train for months between Paris and Mans by 
an electrically actuated locomotive, though the electricity 1s 
generated on that same locomotive, and not conveyed by a con- 
ductor; that the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company of 
America has constructed and worked an electric locomotive 
weighing about ninety tons, actuated by electricity conveyed to 
it by a conductor ; and that thousands of miles of tramways are 
worked by the same means. No doubt the application of elec- 
