24. 
I think, of encouragement to what has been accomplished by your 
skill. The old methods of transferring power by means of cog- 
wheels and ratchets has given way to the utilization of power by 
means of the pulley and the belt. You enter a factory now and see 
whirling around you what appears to be simply a loose strap passed 
over a pulley, with ponderous masses of machinery driven for the 
production of objects that are useful to mankind, some of them of 
prime necessity, and all of them recognized as great coadjutors in 
the work of practical education. 
In every large machine shop that we enter we see the evidences 
of the invention of instruments of precision by which the labors of 
the mechanician are rendered more easy and more perfect ; the plan- 
ing machine supersedes the old attempt to form a level surface by 
the application of the hand plane; the turning-lathe accomplishes 
the formation of very complex forms, far differing from the original 
cylinder or cone that was the marvelous product of the lathes of 
old ; the gunstock, or the last for a shoe for the human foot, or any 
complicated form of object, is turned out as if by magic in the im- 
proved lathes of the present day, and thus enters into the general 
mass of useful objects and the evidences of profound invention and 
skill. 
And now, my friends, while I have not especially referred to the 
history of the American Philosophical Society, I will give youa 
reason for it, in the fact that it has already been given to you 
with such marvelous fidelity and truth by the public press that I 
could add no words to make the record which they have trans- 
cribed more complete or full. But I will say in conclusion, 
that one of the most useful applications of knowledge that these 
two centuries have witnessed, is the progress of the printing 
press. In the hall of the child of this Society, the Franklin 
Institute of Pennsylvania, stands the original printing press of 
Benjamin Franklin. Contrast that old but powerful instrument of 
its day with the steam presses that are rattling with their machinery 
and the operation of their contrivances every hour through the ex- 
isting busy day. ‘Their work and the result of their labors seems 
even to exceed what we have witnessed by the utilization of light 
and electricity. Light and electricity contribute no doubt to the 
vitality of their existence, but I think one of the most marvelous 
things for study is to visit the interior of a large, well-equipped 
printing office of the present day, and see with what rapidity the 
