6 REPORT — 1888. 



of Science of a date some two and a half centuries ago, let us come a 

 little nearer to our own times. 



Electricity — known in its simplest form, to the Greeks by the results 

 arising from the friction on amber, and named therefrom ; afterwards 

 produced from glass cylinder machines, or from plate machines ; and 

 produced a century ago by the 'Influence' machine — remained, as did the 

 discoveries of Volta and Galvani, the pursuit of but a few, and even the 

 brilliant experiments of Davy did not suffice to give very great impetus 

 to this branch of physical science. 



Ronalds, in 1823, constructed an electric telegraph. In 1837 the 

 first commercial use was made of the telegraph, and from that time 

 electrical science received an impulse such as it had never before ex- 

 perienced. Further scientific facts were discovered ; fresh applications 

 were made of these discoveries. These fresh applications led to renewed 

 vigour in research, and there was the action and reaction of which I 

 have spoken. In the year 1871 the Society of Telegraph Engineers was 

 established. In the year 1861 our own Association had appointed a Com- 

 mittee to settle the question of electrical standards of resistance, which 

 Committee, with enlarged functions, continued its labours for twenty 

 years, and of this Committee I had the honour of being a member. The 

 results of the labours of that Committee endure (somewhat modified, it is 

 true), and may be pointed to as one of the evidences of the value of the 

 work done by the British Association. Since Ronalds's time, how vast 

 are the advances which have been made in electrical communication of 

 intelligence, by land lines, by submarine cables all over the world, and by 

 the telephone! Few will be prepared to deny the statement, that pure 

 electrical science has received an enormous impulse, and has been ad- 

 vanced by the commercial application of electricity to the foi'egoing, and 

 to purposes of lighting. Since this latter application, scores, I may say 

 hundreds, of acute minds have been devoted to electrical science, stimulated 

 thereto by the possibilities and probabilities of this application. 



In this country, no doubt, still more would have been done if the 

 lighting of districts from a central source of electricity had not been, 

 since 1882, practically forbidden by the Act passed in that year. This 

 Act had in its title the facetious statement that it was ' to facilitate 

 Electrical Lighting' — although it is an Act which, even modified as it 

 has been this year, is still a great discouragement of free enterprise, 

 and a bar to progress. The other day a member of the House of Com- 

 mons was saying to me : ' I think it is very much to our discredit in 

 England that we should have allowed ourselves to be outrun in the dis- 

 ti'ibution of electric lighting to houses, by the inhabitants of the United 

 States, and by those of other countries.' Looking upon him as being 

 one of the authors of the ' facetious ' Act, I thought it pertinent t& 

 quote the case of the French parricide, who, being asked what he has 

 to say in mitigation of punishment, pleads, ' Pity a poor orphan ' — 



