TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION (i. 753 



Since the British Association last met in Lancashire (in 1896) there have been 

 important events and changes in the chief technical institutions of the county. 

 First, there were last year the Jubilee celebrations of Owens College, Manchester, 

 ■when it received congratulations on its half-century of work from universities and 

 learned socielies in all parts of the world. Here, as I need hardly remind you, 

 the engineering laboratory is under the able direction of Professor Osborne 

 Reynolds, F.R.S., who presided over Section G of the British Association at their 

 Meeting in Manchester in 1887. Then, also in Manchester, there is the recently 

 completed and admirable Municipal School of Technology; but as a paper will be 

 read on this subject, and members will have an opportunity of visiting the school 

 and inspecting its engineering laboratory, I will content myself with wishino- it 

 every success in the manifold fields of industrial education in which it is engaged. 

 Again, only this year Victoria University has lost a College, and Liverpool has 

 gained a University. At University College, Liverpool, in the Session of 1884-5, 

 a Professorship of Engineering was instituted as a provisional measure. The 

 erection of engineeriug laboratories and the endowment of the Chair were after- 

 wards provided for by gifts in commemoration of the Jubilee year of the reio-n of 

 Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria. Professor II. S. Hele-Shaw, F.R.S., was 

 appointed to the Chair in the first instance, a position which he still continues to 

 hold. 



This year a Royal Charter has been granted establishing the University of 

 Liverpool, and transferring to it the powers nf University College, Liverpool. 

 I think one cannot offer to the University of Liverpool a heartier wish than that 

 it may be as successful in the future as University College, Liverpool, has been 

 in the past, a wish in which I am sure you will all join. 



There is yet one other college to which, though not in Lancashire, I should 

 like to make a passing reference, the first to include engineering in its educa- 

 tional curriculum, viz.. University College, London. It was originally founded 

 in 1828 under the name of the ' University of London,' and has recently 

 together with King's College, become merged in the present University of 

 Loudon. The first engineering laboratory was established at University College 

 in 1878, fifty years after the inauguration of the college, whilst a separate chair 

 for electrical engineering was founded in 1885, and an electrical laboratory was 

 added ten years ago. One cannot say farewell to it as it used to be without 

 mentioning the name of Dr. B. W. Kennedy, F.R.S., who was President of this 

 Section of the British Association in 1894 at Oxford, and who has done so much 

 for engineering education. 



Before leaving the subject of technical education, I venture to express the 

 hope that in the training of engineering students increased attention will be paid 

 to the combination of artistic merit with excellence of structural design, so that 

 in respect to artistic treatment our engineering structures may not remain so far 

 behind those of our Continental brethren as is unfortunately now frequently the 

 case. 



Engineering Standards. 



_ A very important work has been going on quietly and unostentatiously in our 

 midst for some time past, the results of which must aftect the engineering pro- 

 fession at home and abroad. I refer to the work of the Engineering Standards 

 Committee, which as many of my hearers know, was appointed in 1901 and is 

 now composed of 178 members, among whom are many Government officials. I 

 alluded to the earher work of this Committee in my Presidential Address to the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers in 1901, and that work has since been gradually but 

 surely extended. The Committee has received not only the moral but the financial 

 support of His Majesty's Government, and the result.s of its labours are being 

 adopted by all the leading Government departments. 



In addition to the main Committee there are no fewer than twenty-five separate 

 committees and sub-committees engaged on work, covering a wide range of opera- 

 tions, many of the members sitting on more than one committee, 



1903. 3 



