SECTION G.—ENGINEERING. 
POWER 
ADDRESS ' BY 
SIR ALFRED EWING, K.C.B., LL.D., D.Se., F.R.S. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
Ir is perhaps right to warn you at the outset that thisis an attempt to kill 
two birds with one rather large stone. The address has to serve a double 
purpose. Besides being the usual offering to convention which is expected of 
the President of a Section, it has the responsibility of being a Thesis, 
delivered in fulfilment of a trust which was undertaken by the British 
Association many years ago. The thesis has a prescribed theme. So 
instead of being free, as presidents of sections generally are, to choose any 
text, or none, | find a text ready chosen for me. It is taken, as you will 
presently see, from one of the prophets. Not one of the minor prophets, 
for the prophecy about which I have to speak was uttered by Sir Frederick 
Bramwell. | Nobody who is old enough to recall Bramwell's commanding 
presence, his generous proportions, his patriarchal air, his pleasant accept- 
ance of acknowledged leadership, will ever think of him in terms such as the 
word ‘ minor’ would imply. Fifty years ago he was Pontifex Maximus in 
the world of engineering, not because he built bridges but because he 
spoke with almost papal authority. An opinion by Bramwell could do 
much to make or mar any enterprise. To-day we have to discuss a forecast 
which he offered at the jubilee meeting of this Association, a forecast to 
which he and his contemporaries attached particular importance. We 
must now assign to it a place in the long list of prophecies that have turned 
out to be over-statements ; nevertheless, it deserves attention not only 
as an item in the history of mechanical science, but because in the light 
of present-day experience we recognise how much there was in it of the 
vision of truth. 
It deals with a subject that is appropriate for a presidential address to 
Section G. The president of this section cannot but be conscious that he 
is addressing an audience larger than a mere group of engineering experts. 
Beyond the professional circle is a fringe, and beyond the fringe a vague 
and mobile auditory of persons who take a lively interest in engineering 
questions, whose knowledge, so far as it goes, is real and practical. Among 
the triumphs of applied science is this that it has transformed the man in - 
the street into a sort of engineer. Society has been mechanised: the 
noise and oil and unrest of the workshop are become a part of normal life. 
The language of the expert is no longer his own shibboleth; it has been 
taken into the stock of common speech. A little knowledge used to be 
called a dangerous thing; now we all have it and are content—or at least 
obliged—to live dangerously. I need not enlarge on a point of which 
1 See note on page 140. 
Di oo et,” eames 
Pe retew 6 
