THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ii 



From the first the Association took cognisance of engineering as 

 one of the subjects it was created to advance. One of its earliest 

 acts, and a very wise one, was to invite reports on the state of 

 science : these were called for in many different fields and were 

 written by the best available experts. In the first batch of such 

 reports were two that dealt with engineering, one on the Strength 

 of Materials and the other on Hydraulics. As it happened they 

 were of very unequal merit ; but they are alike in this, that they 

 demonstrate how conspicuous was the lack of science on the part of 

 early British engineers. 



The engineers of those days were big professional figures. They 

 had covered the country with a network of roads and bridges and 

 canals ; they had drained the fens ; they had built harbours and 

 lighthouses. By multiplying factories, by extending the uses of 

 coal and iron, they were laying the foundations of that commercial 

 supremacy which, so long as it lasted, we took for granted as a sort 

 of national right. They had taught the world how to light towns 

 by gas, and were beginning to drive ships by steam. Above all, 

 they had shown that a new era of locomotion was about to set in. 

 A railway connecting Liverpool with Manchester had been opened : 

 its success was proved, and schemes were projected that would 

 soon utilise labour on a large scale for a host of tunnels and cuttings 

 and embankments, and so relieve the scourge of unemployment 

 which — as we also know — follows the scourge of war. The engineering 

 pioneers were sagacious men who put their faith in experience ; they 

 knew little of theory and cared less. Instinct and personality 

 carried them through difiiculties of a kind that science might have 

 helped them to solve or to avoid. They had the sense to profit by 

 their own mistakes. 



It is significant that in 1832, when the British Association called 

 for a report on the present state of our knowledge of Hydraulics 

 as a branch of engineering, the terms of reference included this 

 curious phrase : ' Stating whether it appears from the writings 

 of Dutch, Italian and other authors that any general principles are 

 established in this subject.' 



The report was written by George Rennie, a son of the greater 

 Rennie who left us a monument of his genius — I wish I could 

 say an imperishable monument — in Waterloo Bridge. After giving 

 a good summary of the work of foreign theorists the reporter 

 remarks : 



' It only remains for us to notice the scanty contributions 

 of our own countrymen. While France and Germany were 

 rapidly advancing upon the traces of Italy, England remained 

 an inactive spectator of their progress.' 



