668 ; REPORT—1904. 
former; while the work of the engineer often provides data and adds a stimulus 
to the researches of the scientist, And I think his remarks might be further 
appropriately extended by adding that since the scientist, the engineer, the 
chemist, the metallurgist, the geologist, all seek to unravel and to compass 
a secrets of Nature, they are all to a great extent interdependent on each 
other. 
But though research laboratories are the chief centres of scientific invention, 
and colleges, institutions, and schools train the mind to scientific methods of 
attack, yet in mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering the chief work of 
practical investigation has been carried on by individual engineers, or by firms, 
syndicates, and companies. These not only have adapted discoveries made by 
scientists to commercial uses, but also in many instances have themselves made 
such discoveries or inventions, 
To return to the subject, let us for a moment consider in what invention really 
consists, and let us dismiss from our minds the very common conception which is 
given in dictionaries and encyclopzedias that invention isa happy thought occurring 
to an inventive mind, Such a conception would give us an entirely erroneous idea 
of the formation of the great steps in advance in science and engineering that have 
been made during the last century; and, further, it would lead us to forget the 
fact that almost all important inventions have been the result of long training and 
laborious research and long-continued labour. Generally, what is usually called 
an invention is the work of many individuals, each one adding something to the 
work of his predecessors, each one suggesting something to overcome some difficulty, 
trying many things, testing them when possible, rejecting the failures, retaining 
the best, and by a process of gradual selection arriving at the most perfect. method 
of accomplishing the end in view. 
This is the usual process by which inventions are made. 
Then after the invention, which we will suppose is the successful attempt to 
unravel some secret of Nature, or some mechanical or other problem, there follows 
in many cases the perfecting of the invention for general use, the realisation of the 
advance or its introduction commercially ; this after-work often involves as great 
difficulties and requires for its accomplishment as great a measure of skill as the 
invention itself, of which it may be considered in many cases as forming a part. 
If the invention, as is often the case, competes with or is intended to supersede 
some older method, then there is a struggle for existence between the two. ‘This 
state of things has been well described by Mr. Fletcher Moulton. The new 
invention, like a young sapling in a dense forest, struggles to grow up to maturity, 
but the dense shade of the older and higher trees robs it of the necessary light. If 
it could only once grow as tall as the rest all would be easy, it would then get its 
fair share of light and sunshine. Thus it often occurs in the history of inventions 
that the surroundings are not favourable when the first attack is made, and that 
subsequently it is repeated by different persons, and finally under different circum- 
stances it may eventually succeed and become established. 
We may take in illustration almost any of the great inventions of undoubted 
utility of which we happen to have the full history—for instance, some of the 
great scientific discoveries, or some of the great mechanical inventions, such as 
the steam-engine, the gas-engine, the steamship, the locomotive, the motor-car, 
or some of the great chemical or metallurgical discoveries. Are not most, if 
not all, of these the result of the long-continued labour of many persons, and 
has not the financial side been, in most cases, a very important factor in securing 
success ? 
The history of the steam-engine might be selected, but I prefer on this occasion 
to take the internal-combustion engine, for two reasons—firstly, because its history 
is a typical one; and secondly, because we are to hear a paper by that able 
exponent and great inventor in the domain of the gas-engine, Mr. Dugald Clerk, 
describing not only the history, but the engine in its present state of development 
and perfection, an engine which is able to convert the greatest percentage of heat 
units in the fuel into mechanical work, excepting only, as far as we at present 
know, the voltaic battery and living organisms. 
