PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 559 
one knows that smokeless combustion is not necessarily, nor always, the most 
economical, but that is only because we have not yet learned how to use fuel in 
anything like a perfect manner. But ali the tendencies at the“present time are 
towards improvement, and the more attention we pay to the elimination of the 
smoke nuisance the more rapid will be our progress in the economical use of one 
of the most valuable of our inheritances. It is therefore clearly the duty of 
every engineer who has to do with power or heat production—for the credit of 
his profession and even in the interests of his immediate clients—to consider the 
use and convenience of all who can be affected by the work for which he is 
responsible. The time is not far distant when the direct burning of bituminous 
coal in open grates will be looked upon as not only a source of serious harm but 
as a culpably wasteful practice. Great progress has been made in processes for 
the partial distillation of coal by which a free burning and quite smokeless fuel 
is prepared and valuable by-products (so-called) are conserved. If all engineers 
concerned with the design and application of plants in which coal is used had a 
due sensé of their responsibilities to the community, progress would have been, 
and would to-day be, much more rapid; and economies would be effected that 
would, in themselves, amply justify the application of more scientific methods of 
utilising the constituents of a very complex material, which we are too apt to 
look upon as merely a convenient source of heat—plentiful enough and cheap 
enough, as yet, to be used in a most wasteful manner. It will not be to the 
credit of our profession if it should require restrictive legislation not only to 
prevent a gross interference with the health and comfort of the community and 
the amenities of our centres of industry or of population, but to effect economies 
in the utilisation of the chief of the sources of power which it is our function to 
direct to the best advantage of all concerned. 
-» In other directions also we see that progress towards economy is leading to 
a reduction, and possibly to the entire elimination, of all the nuisances associated 
with the older methods of power and heat production. The great improvements 
that have recently been made in producer plants and gas engines have rendered 
out of date, as regards economy, at least the smaller sizes of steam plants which 
are so fruitful a source of injury and inconvenience to the community; and we 
now have engines of the Diesel, and the so-called semi-Diesel, types that can 
utilise natural oils, and oils obtained in the distillation or partial distillation of 
coal, not only with an efficiency hitherto unattained in heat-engines, but ‘ without 
injury or damage to any one single person’—except possibly the maker ot 
inferior 2’ plants. 
‘Present indications point to the coming of a time, in the near future, when 
the power and heat required for industrial and domestic purposes will be dis- 
tributed electrically, in a perfectly inoffensive tnanner, from large central 
stations; and even at these stations there will be no pollution of the atmosphere 
that could give the most sensitive of critics any just grounds of complaint 
against the intrusion of science into our lives. In his Presidential Address to 
the Institution of Electrical Engineers in November 1910, Mr. Ferranti dealt 
in a most masterly way with this, which is undoubtedly the greatest of the 
many schemes at present before the engineering profession. That address reads 
like a chapter from a romance of Utopia, but unlike most of the forecasts that 
have been presented to us of ideal conditions in a would of the future, the system 
which Mr. Ferranti sketches out, and advocates with so much knowledge and con- 
vincing argument, does not depend for its reasonableness on the postulation of a 
perfected humanity. It would not only provide vastly improved conditions of 
life for the community as a whole, but it would satisfy the more selfish aims of 
the users of power and the makers of machinery, by increasing the economy of 
production and stimulating the demand for mechanical appliances. No doubt 
there may be some who will hold that to commend any worthy scheme, to those 
who might carry it out, by an appeal to their selfish interests is an altogether 
immoral kind of argument. I do not think so. Advancement of the race throug’ 
2 My typist in transcribing a rather illegible draft of this passage substituted 
for the adjective I have here used the less restrained, but perhaps equally 
appropriate one, ‘infernal,’ but I noticed this in time to amend the emenda- 
tion. I had no intention to speak se candidly of any of the works of members of 
my own profession. 
