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and the laws governing the operations of electrical systems and apparatus must be 
investigated and formulated in appropriate mathematical expressions. And so, 
perforce, as the inevitable consequence of the growth of the telegraph industry, 
and mainly at the hands of those interested in submarine telegraphy, there came 
about the system of electrical and electromagnetic units, based on the early 
magnetic work of Gauss and Weber, developed further by Lord Kelvin, by Bright 
and Clark, and last but not least by Clerk Maxwell. Had there been no telegraph 
industry to force electrical measurement and electrical theory to the front, where 
would Clerk Maxwell’s work have been ? He would probably have given his 
unique powers to the study of optics or geometry; his electromagnetic theory 
of light would never have leapt into his brain ; he would never have propounded 
the existence of electric waves in the ether. And then we should never have 
had the far-reaching investigations of Heinrich Hertz; nor would the British 
Association at Oxford in 1894 have witnessed the demonstration of wireless 
telegraphy by Sir Oliver Lodge. A remark of Lord Rayleigh’s may here be 
recalled, that the invention of the telephone had probably done more than 
anything else to make electricians understand the principle of self-induction. 
In considering this reflex influence of the industrial applications upon the 
progress of pure science it is of some significance to note that for the most part 
this influence is entirely helpful. There may be sporadic cases where industrial 
conditions tend temporarily to check progress by imposing persistence of a 
particular type of machine or appliance ; but the general trend is always to help 
to new developments. The reaction aids the action; the law that is true enough 
in inorganic conservative systems, that reaction opposes the action, ceases here to 
be applicable, as indeed it ceases to be applicable in a vast number of organic 
phenomena. It is the very instability thereby introduced which is the essential 
of progress. The growing organism acts on its environment, and the change in 
the environment reacts on the organism—not in such a way as to oppose the growth, 
but so as to promote it. So is it with the development of pure science and its 
practical applications. 
In further illustration of this principle one might refer to the immense effect 
which the engineering use of steel has had upon the study of the chemistry of the 
alloys. And the study of the alloys has in turn led to the recent development of 
metallography. It would even seem that through the study of the intimate 
structure of metals, prompted by the needs of engineers, we are within measurable 
distance of arriving at a knowledge of the secret of crystallogenesis. [Everything 
points to the probability of a very great and rapid advance in that fascinating 
branch of pure science at no distant date. 
History of the Development of Electric Motive Power. 
There is, however, one last example of the interaction of science and industry 
which may claim closer attention. In the history of the development of the 
electric motor one finds abundant illustration of both aspects of that interaction. 
We go back to the year 1821, when Faraday, after studying the phenomena of 
electromagnetic deflexion of a needle by an electric current (Oersted’s discovery), 
first succeeded in producing continuous rotations by electromagnetic means. In his 
simple apparatus a piece of suspended copper wire, carrying a current from a small 
battery, and dipping at its lower end into a cup of mercury, rotated continuously 
around the pole of a short bar-magnet of steel placed upright in the cup. In another 
variety of this experiment the magnet rotated around the central wire, which 
was fixed. These pieces of apparatus were the merest toys, incapable of doing 
any useful work; nevertheless they demonstrated the essential principle, and 
suggested further possibilities, Two years later, Barlow, using a star-wheel of 
copper, pivoted so that the lowest point of the star should make contact with a 
small pool of mercury, found that the star-wheel rotated if a current was sent 
through the arm of the star while the arm itself was situated between the poles 
of a steel horseshoe-magnet. Shortly afterwards Sturgeon improved the appa- 
ratus by substituting a copper disc for the star-wheel. The action was the same, 
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