G.—ENGINEERING. 131 
take particular satisfaction in noticing ships that are not only driven but 
cooled by internal-combustion engines. And from the docks they will 
proceed over the City, where at every crossing he will observe the con- 
gestion of motor-cars and taxis, and the multitudinous motor-bus—but 
never a growler, which was the vehicle he used to favour. I well remember 
his taking me to visit a cold store on the south side of the river; we were 
on our way in a growler when the bottom fell out and we were left sitting 
in the road. He was, as I have hinted, no light weight ; my part in the 
comedy was only that of the last straw. The cab stopped without injury 
to life or limb, Bramwell forming an effective automatic brake. His 
genial dignity suffered no eclipse. His spirits were undamped—and his 
person too, for luckily the street was dry. 
Finally, let us think of the pilot bringing him over Waterloo Place to 
revive his memories of the beloved club where he used to spend many 
placid hours. Below him will be the Atheneum, more than ever a haven 
_ of rest for the mature, but now on the outer edge of a vortex which is fed 
by torrents of one-way traffic from the Haymarket and Trafalgar Square— 
a veritable inferno of internal combustion—an inferno that would be 
intolerable were it not tempered from time to.time by authoritative 
 outstretchings of the arm of the law. As he watches the maelstrom, 
and perhaps sees a bishop trying to reach the club, he will thank the 
fate which has removed him from the present-day terrors of the pedestrian, 
from compulsions to unseemly agility and temptations to unseemly 
profanity. Such temptations are, of course, only for laymen, but life in 
Waterloo Place, even for bishops, must sometimes be furious as well as fast. 
When all these things have been seen, you must not imagine Bramwell 
posing as the satisfied prophet who complacently remarks ‘I told you 
so. He had too judicial a temper for that. He would want to know 
about other users of power, and would ask many questions. What about 
_ our navy, and other navies, and what about the biggest liners and the 
ocean tramps, and what about the railways and the great factories and 
the coal pits with their plant for winding and ventilating, and so forth, 
and what about the distribution of light ‘and power from central stations 
_—on what kind of prime-movers do these rely ? And the answer would be 
steam, and steam, and yet again steam. He would soon learn that steam 
still does a great part of the work of the world, and that one need not go 
_ to the Science Museum at South Kensington to find specimens of its 
Temains. But if he did go to the Science Museum (and let me say it is a 
ilgrimage no visitor to London should miss) he would see among the 
admirably displayed exhibits some remarkable engines. Side by side 
with the mementos of Newcomen and Watt, those fascinating heralds of 
the dawn, he would see engines of a far more recent type, enshrined 
_ there in the honour they so well deserve, not as relics of an obsolete past 
but as precursors of a modern era, the era which was opened to the world 
by the genius of Charles Parsons. For among the treasures of our national 
Semcon of science is Parsons’ first steam turbine, which dates from 
1884, also the first, or nearly first, turbine to which he fitted a condenser. 
: which dates from 1891, and also a part of his famous little craft, the 
Turbinia, by which in 1897 he demonstrated the applicability of the steam 
turbine to the propulsion of ships. 
a 
: 
z 
K 2 
