718 REPORT— 1889. 



Section G.— MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 



President of the Section — W. Anderson, M.Inst.C.E. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



I HAVE had considerable difficulty in selecting a subject which should form the 

 main feature of my Address. This meeting being held in Newcastle, it seemed 

 almost imperative that I should dwell upon two industries which may be said to 

 have had their genesis here ; that I should direct your attention to the extra- 

 ordinary development of the system of transmitting power by hydraulic agency, 

 and the use of the same agency for lifting enormous weights or exerting mighty 

 pressures, and that I should not neglect to notice a manufacture of specially 

 national importance — that of heavy artillery, and of ships of war sent forth fully 

 equipped and ready to take their places in our first line of defence. 



The desire which I felt of treating of these subjects was heightened by the 

 opportunity which it would have aiforded of paying a tribute of respect and admi- 

 ration to the distinguished citizen of this town who by his genius and perseverance 

 created the Elswick Works, raised the character of British Engineering, and 

 rendered his country services so eminent that her Majesty has seen fit to recognise 

 them by bestowing honours higher than any which an engineer has hitherto been 

 able to achieve. 



But I felt that the themes mentioned, important as they are, have been fre- 

 quently treated of by able men, and that I would perhaps render more service to 

 Mechanical Science if I drew your attention to a subject which appears to me to 

 be bearing with daily augmenting force on the practical manipulation of the mate- 

 rials used in construction. I allude to the molecular structure of matter. This 

 branch of science has, up to the present time, been left very much in the hands of 

 the chemist and the physicist, and I dare say that many engineers may think that 

 it is by no means desirable to change the arrangement ; but I am persuaded that 

 the progress of engineering, the more exact methods of dealing with the properties 

 of materials, the increased demands on their powers of endurance, render it im- 

 peratively necessary that mechanics should interest themselves more deeply in their 

 internal structures and in the true meaning of the laws by which their properties 

 are defined. 



Five years ago, at Montreal, in his Address to the Mathematical Section, Sir 

 William Thomson took for his subject the ultimate constitution of matter, and 

 discussed, in a most suggestive manner, the very structure of the ultimate atoms 

 or molecules. He passed in review the theories extant on the subject, and pointed 

 out the progress which had been made in recent years by the labours of Clausius, 

 of Clerk Maxwell, of Tait, and of others, among whom his own name, I may add, 

 stands in unrivalled prominence. 



I will not presume to enter into the field of scientific thought and speculation 

 traversed by Sir William Thomson, because I am only too conscious that both my 

 mathematical knowledge and my acquaintance with the natural sciences is too 

 limited to entitle the views which I may have formed to any respect ; I propose to 



