126 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
pressure on the piston is so little in excess of the friction of the machine as to 
render the steam not worth retaining, and at this point we reject it. In 
figurative language, we take the cream off the bowl, and throw away the 
milk.’ I shall show later that in the modern use of steam we no longer 
have to cry over the spilling of milk to which Lord Armstrong referred. 
After the president had spoken, Bramwell also gave an address ‘on some 
of the developments of mechanical engineering during the last half- 
century,’ which is printed in extenso in the Report. It reviews a great 
field with the lucidity of which he was a master, dealing specially with 
applications of the steam-engine, and it includes a section relating to the 
transmission of power. Electrical transmission is barely touched on: 
it had, in fact, scarcely begun ; but he speaks of transmission of power by 
means of gas, and in that connection he remarks :— 
‘I think there is a very large future indeed for gas-engines. I 
do not know whether this may be the place wherein to state it, but 
I believe the way in which we shall utilise our fuel hereafter will, 
in all probability not be by way of the steam-engine. Sir William 
Armstrong alluded to this probability in his address, and I entirely 
agree—if he will allow me to say so—that such a change in the pro- 
duction of power from fuel appears to be impending, if not im the 
immediate future, at all events in a time not very far remote: and 
however much the mechanical section of the British Association may 
to-day contemplate with regret even the more distant prospect of the 
steam-engine becoming a thing of the past, I very much doubt whether 
those who meet here fifty years hence will then speak of that motor 
except in the character of a curiosity to be found in a museum.’ 
The view expressed by Bramwell in this remarkable forecast found 
support in more than one quarter. In the following year Sir William 
Siemens was President of this Association. After acknowledging the 
great service which the Association had done to engineering by settling a 
consistent and practical system of electrical units, and himself suggesting 
that the unit of electrical power in that system should be called the Watt, 
he went on to compare the theoretical efficiencies of steam-engine and 
gas-engine on the basis of the theory of Carnot, and then remarked :— 
‘ Before many years we shall find in our factories and on board 
our ships, engines with a fuel consumption not exceeding 1 lb. of coal 
per effective horse-power per hour, in which the gas producer takes 
the place of the somewhat complex and dangerous steam boiler.’ 
Again, the late Lord Rayleigh, speaking from the Presidential Chair 
at the Montreal meeting of 1884, says :— 
‘ The efficiency of the steam-engine is found to be so high that there 
is no great margin remaining for improvement. The higher initial 
temperature possible in the gas-engine opens out much wider possi- 
bilities, and many good judges look forward to a time when the 
steam-engine will have to give way to its younger rival.” 
Let me quote one more authority. Fleeming Jenkin, lecturing 
on Gas and Caloric Engines at the Institution of Civil Engineers, in 
February, 1884, refers to the fact that Dowson gas even then allowed the 
gas-engine to compete favourably with the steam-engine, and concludes :— 
‘Since this is the case now, and since theory shows that it is 
