16 REPORT— 1895. 



electi'ic induction, his investigation of the laws of electro-chemical decom- 

 position, and of the mode of electrolytical action. 



But, the practical application of our electrical knowledge was then 

 limited to the use of lightning-conductors for buildings and ships. 

 Indeed, it may be said that the applications of electricity to the use of 

 man have grown up side by side with the British Association. 



One of the first practical applications of Faraday's discoveries was in 

 the deposition of metals and electro-plating, v/hich has developed into a 

 large branch of national industry ; and the dissociating effect of the 

 electric arc, for the reduction of ores, and in other processes, is daily 

 obtaining a wider extension. 



But probably the application of electricity which is tending to pro- 

 duce the greatest change in our mental, and even material condition, is 

 the electric telegraph and its sister, the telephone. By their agency not 

 only do we learn, almost at the time of their occurrence, the events which 

 are happening in distant parts of the world, but they are establishing a 

 community of thought and feeling between all the nations of the world 

 ■which is influencing their attitude towards each other, and, we may hope, 

 may tend to weld them mere and more into one family. 



The electric telegraph was introduced experimentally in Germany in 

 1833, two years after tlie formation of the Association. It was made a 

 commercial success by Cooke and Wheatstone in England, whose first 

 attempts at telegi'aphy were made on the line from Euston to Camden 

 Town in 1837, and on the line from Paddington to West Drayton in 1838. 



The submarine telegraph to America, conceived in ] 856, became a 

 practical reality in 1861 through the commercial energy of Cyrus Field 

 and Pender, aided by the mechanical skill of Latimer Clark, Gooch, and 

 others, and the scienti6c genius of Lord Kelvin. The knowledge of 

 electricity gained by means of its application to the telegraph largely 

 assisted the extension of its utility in other directions. 



The electric light gives, in its incandescent form, a very perfect 

 hygienic light. Where rivers are at hand the electrical transmission of 

 power will drive railway trains and factories economically, and might 

 enable each artisan to convert his room into a workshop, and thus assist 

 in restoring to the labouring man some of the individuality which the 

 factory has tended to destroy. 



In 1843 Joule described his experiments for determining the mechani- 

 cal equivalent of heat. But it was not until the meeting at Oxford, in 

 1817, that he fully developed the law of the conservation of energy, which, 

 in conjunction with Newton's law of the conservation of momentum, and 

 Dalton's law of the conservation of chemical elements, constitutes a 

 complete mechanical foundation for physical science. 



Who, at the foundation of the Association, would have believed some 

 far-seeing philosopher if he had foretold that the spectroscope would 

 analyse the constituents of the sun and measure the motions of the stars ; 

 that we should liquefy air and utilise temperatures approaching to the 



