860 EEPOBT— 1893. 



Section G.— MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 

 Pbesibent op the Section — Jekemiah Head, Esq., M.Inst. C.E., F.C.S. 



THUBSDAT, SEPTEMBER 14. 



The Peesidext delivered the following Address : — 



This Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was 

 founded with the object of making more widely known, and more generally 

 appreciated, all well-ascertained facts and well-established principles having special 

 reference to mechanical science. 



As President of the Section for the year, it becomes my duty to inaugurate the 

 proceedings by addressing you upon some portion of the scientific domain to which 

 I have referred, and in which your presence here indicates that you are all more or 

 less interested. 



MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 



The founders of the British Association no doubt regarded the field of operations 

 which they awarded to Section G as a not less purely scientific one than those 

 which they allotted to the other Sections. And, indeed, mechanical science studied, 

 say, by Watt was as free from suspicion of commercial bias as chemical science 

 studied, say, by Faraday. 



But whatever may have been the original idea, the practice of the Section has 

 recently been to expend most of its available time in the consideration of more or 

 less beneficial applications of mechanical science, rather than of the first principles 

 thereof. Our Section has become more and more one of applied rather than of 

 pure science. None of the other Sections is free from this fault, if fault it be 

 (which I do not contend or admit), but Section G seems to me to be beyond all 

 question, and beyond all others, the Section of applied science. 



The charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers commences by reciting that 

 the object of that society is ' the general advancement of mechanical science, and 

 more particularly for promoting the acquisition of that species of knowledge which 

 constitutes the profession of a civil engineer, being the art of directing the great 

 sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.' 



It seems that in 1828, when the Institution was incorporated, the term 

 'mechanical science' had a wider meaning than it is now usually imderstood to 

 have. For, according to the charter, the art of directing the great sources of 

 power in nature is only a particular species of knowledge which ' mechanical 

 science ' includes. 



In 1836, or eight years later, the founders of our Section adopted the term 

 without again defining it. Probably they accepted the careful definition of the 

 Great George Street Institution. Time has shown the wisdom of that decision. 

 For we civil engineers and other frequenters of Section G in active practice need far 

 more knowledge than mechanical science can teach us in the ordinary or narrow 

 sense of the term. Our art in its multifarious branches requires, if success is to be 



