TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 729 



owes the possibility of this new study becoming general. In our country nearly 

 all discoveries come from below. The leaders of science, the inventors, receive from 

 a thousand obscure sources the germs of their great discoveries and inventions. 

 When every unit of the population is familiar with scientific ideas our leaders will 

 not only be more numerous, but they will be individually greater. And it is we, 

 and not the schoolmasters, who are familiarising the people with a better knowledge 

 of Nature. When men can hardly take a step without seeing steam engines and 

 electro-motors and telegraphs and telephones and steamships, with drainage and 

 water works, with railways and electric tramways and motor-cars ; when every 

 shop-window is filled with the products of engineerinnr enterprise, it is getting 

 rather difficult for people to have any belief in evil spirits and witchcraft. 



All the heart-breaking preaching of enthusiasts in education would produce 

 very little effect upon an old society like that of England if it were not for the 

 engineer. He has produced peace. He is turning the brown desert lands of the 

 earth into green pastures. He is producing that intense competition among 

 nations which compels education. If England has always been the last to begin 

 reform, she has always been the most thorough and steadfast of the nations on any 

 reform when once she has started on it. Education, pedagogy, is a progressive 

 science ; and who am I that I should say that the system of education advocated by 

 me is that which will be found best for England ? In school education of the 

 average boy or man England has as yet had practically no experience, for she has 

 given no real thought to it. Yet when she does, I feel that although the Finsbury 

 echeme for engineers may need great improvement, it contains the germ of that 

 system which must be adopted by a race which has always learnt through trial 

 and error, which has been led less by abstract principles or abstract methods of 

 reasoning than any race known in history. 



The following Paper was read : — • 



1. Recent Progress in Large Gas Engines. By Herbert A. Humphrey, 



A.M.Inst.C.E. 



The author said that the last few years had seen a development in large gas 

 engines which has but few parallels in the history of engineering enterprise. Gaa 

 engines of 1,200 and 1,500 h.p. are already working, and others of 2,000 to 

 4,000 h.p. are being constructed. In the Paris Exhibition of 1900 the 600 h.p. 

 Cockerill gas engine created much surprise, but now the makers have in hand an 

 engine of 2,600 h p., and are quite prepared to build a 5,000 h.p. gas engine. 



In this country the first gas engines above 4C0 h.p. were started in 1900 and 

 ran with Mond gas, but at the present time the two leading English manufacturers 

 have delivered or have under construction fifty-one gas engines of between 2C0 

 and 1,000 h.p. Of these Messrs. Crossley Brothers, of Manchester, supply twenty- 

 eight engines, havina: an aggregate of 8,300 h.p., or an average of 296 h.p. per engine, 

 and the Premier Gas Engine Company, of Nottingham, supply twenty-three engines 

 with a total of 9,300 h.p., giving an average of 404 h.p. per engine. These two 

 makers collectively supply 17,600 h.p., and of this power 12,500 h.p. is for driving 

 dynamos. 



This is a striking proof of rapid progress, but we have to look abroad for the 

 great achievements in this direction. Neglecting, throughout this paper, all engines 

 below 200 h.p., we find that Messrs. Kbrting Bros, and iheir licensees have made 

 or have under construction thirty-two gas engines with a total of 44,500 h.p., 

 averaging 1,390 h.p. per engine. The Society Anonyme John Cockerill of Seraing 

 and their licensees come next with fifty-nine engines, having an aggregate of 

 32,950 h.p. ; so that the average size of the engines built by this firm is 558 h.p. 

 The Gasmotoren Fabrik Deutz take the third place with fifty-one engines, develop- 

 ing collectively 20,655 h.p. ; and are followed by the Deutsche Kraftgas Gesell- 

 schaft and licensees, working under the Oechelhaueser patents, with engines num- 

 bering twenty-eight and giving 16,900 h.p. 



