NA TURE 



[May i, 1884 



moment special inducements to constructive genius. If 

 houses could be built, by the use of iron or otherwise, at, 

 say, half their present cost, the problem of sheltering our 

 poor would be solved ; unsafe and ruinous tenements 

 would disappear, and a demand would set in for building 

 materials and labour such as the world has never known. 



Here, however, the question arises, Supposing that 

 science and art should combine successfully for any such 

 purpose, is it in England that the development will take 

 shape ? 



At the time of the last industrial epoch, that of the intro- 

 duction of railways, it would have been safe to prophesy 

 that this would be the case. It is by no means so certain 

 now. As regards cheap transport, for instance, the most 

 promising recent invention in this field, viz. the caustic 

 soda condenser previously described by us, was brought 

 out in Germany. Other improvements in the same field, 

 such as the portable railways of De Cauville, the rack 

 railway of Riggenbach, the cable tramway of Hallidie, the 

 tireless engine of Francq, the iron sleepers which are 

 rapidly becoming universal in Germany, have all taken 

 their rise either on the Continent or in America. The 

 storage of power, in its only practical form, that of the 

 secondary battery, owes its origin to Plante and Fame. 

 The transmission of power is being worked out by Siemens 

 in Berlin, and by Deprez and Tresca in Paris. Lastly, as 

 to building, no one can travel abroad without seeing that 

 as regards scientific architecture, England stands far 

 nearer the bottom than the top in the scale of civilised 

 nations. 



What is the reason of this ? Why is England thus 

 lagging behind in the race ? The answer is not far to 

 seek. " In America, in France, above all in Germany, the 

 union between science and art is far more close and cor-^ 

 dial than with us. Every practical constructor or manu- 

 facturer is anxious to know all he can of science, every 

 scientific professor desires to mix practice with his theory. 

 Thus on the one hand we find ordinary engineers drawing 

 on all the resources of mathematics for the solution of 

 such problems as the proper section of rails or the re- 

 sistance of trains : on the other hand we see Clausius, 

 perhaps the greatest of German physicists, devoting two 

 Ion- papers to investigate the working theory of the 

 dynamo machine. But a concrete instance will make 

 our meaning clearer. Within the last few days we have 

 inspected a safety lamp, of which some thousands have 

 already been sold for the German mines. It has many 

 points of excellence, but we need only dwell upon one. It 

 is well known to be most important that a miner's lamp 

 should be locked in such a way that he cannot, if he will, 

 >pen it ; and it has been found very difficult to provide any 

 simple kind of lock which it is beyond the resources of a 

 clever workman to tamper with. In this lamp the diffi- 

 culty is got over by making the upper part screw into the 

 lower, while inside the lamp there is a catch or pawl, 

 which, as in a common ratchet, prevents the screw from 

 being turned the opposite way. Hence, that the lamp 

 may be unscrewed, the pawl must be drawn out of place. 

 I n the overseer's office this can be accomplished by means 

 of a powerful horse-shoe magnet. The pawl has a tail, 

 which is attracted by the magnet when the latter is placed 

 in contact with the side of the lamp. The tail moving 

 towards the magnet, the pawl moves in the opposite 



direction, and so allows the upper part of the lamp to be 

 unscrewed, while the lower is held as if in a vice by the 

 same magnetic power. 



Now here we have a simple and beautiful contrivance 

 for effecting an important practical object. It is merely 

 the application of a well-known scientific principle to solve 

 a special problem in construction ; but it never could have 

 been invented except by one to whom the resources of 

 science and the needs of art were equally familiar— who 

 was at once a physicist and an engineer. Now it cannot 

 be questioned that in England we can boast many of the 

 highest authorities in science, many men of the highest 

 skill in practical construction ; but the union of the two 

 is comparatively rare, and yet it is this very union— the 

 application of the scientific spirit to the things of common 

 life, as so well illustrated in the excellent paper by Prof. 

 Newcomb, published elsewhere— which is the vital neces- 

 sity of the age. 



The fault is not all on one side. Science sometimes 

 looks down on Practice as a rough, prosperous mechanic, 

 interested in nothing but his work and his wages, while 

 Practice sneers at Science as a fine gentleman, too much 

 absorbed in crotchets to be worth any attention or respect, 

 and who, if he had not some one to look after him, would 

 shortly be in the workhouse. 



As an instance we may take the magnetic balance lately 

 described by Prof. Hughes. This beautiful instrument 

 promises at least to supply a want long felt by the makers 

 and users of iron— the want of some method of " me- 

 chanical analysis "—some means of determining the 

 physical and chemical properties of a given material— 

 without testing it to destruction, as is now unavoidable. 

 But whilst thus appealing on the one hand to manufac- 

 turers, the invention appealed on the other hand to elec- 

 tricians, as offering a ready index of the magnetic qualities 

 of a metal. By the latter it has been welcomed, and is 

 being used, as, for instance, by Mr. Preece, for the testing 

 of telegraph-wire ; but, so far as we know, not a single 

 manufacturer or engineer has thought it worth while to 

 encounter the small amount of trouble and expense which 

 would be needed to test thoroughly the capabilities of the 

 instrument in determining the mechanical properties of 

 finished iron or steel. 



We by no means wish to imply that no progress is being- 

 made in the direction here pointed out. The work under- 

 taken by the City and Guilds Institute, the foundation of 

 scientific colleges, such as those at Birmingham, Sheffield, 

 Leeds, Nottingham, and elsewhere, the appointment of 

 a Committee on Technical Education, the delivery of 

 scientific lectures at the Institution of Civil Engineers— 

 these are all signs that the gap existing between art and 

 science is at last recognised, and that endeavours are 

 being made to draw them together. Moreover, the old 

 " rule-of-thumb " engineer is rapidly passing away, and a 

 new generation is springing up, who, if they do not pos- 

 sess much science themselves, are at least alive to its value. 

 The testing machine, for instance, is becoming a recog- 

 nised institution in large workshops, where not many- 

 years ago it would have been scouted as absurd. In the 

 skilful hands of a practical engineer, Mr. Wicksteed of 

 Leeds, it has been made to record its own variations of 

 stress by a self-drawn diagram, and this record seems 

 likely to throw fresh and unexpected light on the physical 



