138 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



has been everywiiere adopted, so tliat tlie use of men for this arduous work, 

 and, to a great extent, ponies also, has been abandoned. This under- 

 ground haulage is largely carried out by compressed air engines placed 

 underground, as in many pits it has not been felt safe to introduce electric 

 power for the purpose except in the immediate neighbourhood of the shafts. 

 It is true that the electrical engineer has gone a long way in lessening the 

 liability to sparking, and in enclosing the motors so as further to lessen 

 this risk. We are still left, however, with possible danger caused by the 

 cables along the main roads, which however carefully placed are still 

 liable to be damaged by unexpected falls of roof, thereby introducing a 

 potential danger which is difficult to eliminate. At the coal face the 

 engineer up to the present has not been able to do much to lessen the hard 

 manual labour of the working miner, but in thin seams, say up to three 

 feet thick, where manual work on a solid face would be almost impossible, 

 coal-cutting machinery (in which a well-known firm in this city has 

 successfully specialised) has been introduced, thereby lessening enormously 

 the manual work of the miner. I venture the opinion that the introduction 

 of machinery for this purpose has not yet reached its limit. 



I regret that more members of the public do not take the opportunity 

 of going underground and seeing the men at work at the coal face. On 

 my various visits I always receive a warm welcome from them, and it is 

 a real education to see what the engineer has done, and under what con- 

 ditions the men work in producing an article on which we so much depend 

 for the comfort of our daily life. 



Electrical Engineering. 



This branch of engineering covers a very wide range of subjects and 

 affects our social life almost more intimately than any other type of 

 engineering, except perhaps the supply of good water and efficient drainage 

 installations. It is impossible for me to attempt to cover the whole range 

 of subjects embraced in electrical engineering. Telegraphy, telephony, 

 wireless, electric lighting, electric heating, electric driving, and electric 

 power in their various ranges all enter into and affect the comfort of our 

 domestic life. In considering this branch of engineering as a whole I 

 find it very difficult fairly to divide the credit for its development between 

 the pure scientist and the electrical engineer. The researches and experi- 

 ments in the early part of last century on the part of Wheatstone, Faraday, 

 and Lord Kelvin, and later, coming to our own time, of Sir Oliver Lodge, 

 Senator Marconi, and other eminent scientists, have undoubtedly prepared 

 the road to the later applications of electricity for domestic and engineering 

 purposes, and no electrical engineer to-day can possibly efficiently carry 

 out his duties without a greater knowledge of pure science than may be 

 regarded as essential in other branches of engineering. It is interesting 

 at this meeting in Glasgow to recall that it was at the British Association 

 meeting in this city in 1876 that Graham Bell, in conjunction with Lord 

 Kelvin, brought to the Association's notice the telephone, and, further, 

 the fact that at the Plymouth meeting of this Association in 1877 I shared 

 with many eminent members of the British Association the interesting 

 privilege of telephoning from the saloon to the bridge on the excursion 

 steamer, with Prof. Graham Bell on board, going to and from the Eddy- 



