﻿xlv i Anuual Report of the Council. 



Mechanical Engineers to undertake the investigation, which 

 they entrusted to Mr. Tower. These experiments showed 

 conclusively that though Morin's laws might represent fairly 

 the condition of a journal on the point of " seizing," they 

 applied in no degree to the friction of a well-lubricated bearing. 

 Thus, in place of the friction being proportional to the pressure, 

 it was found to be, within wide limits, almost independent of it. 

 Mr. Tower discovered that in the case of a well-lubricated 

 journal the metal surfaces never touch, being separated by a 

 continuous film of oil. The fact thus established has led to a 

 revolution in the practice of lubrication. For example, high- 

 speed journals are now provided with a supply of oil out of all 

 proportion to what would have been considered sufficient in the 

 early seventies ; and as a consequence the tool-marks are now 

 often still visible on a journal which has made some millions of 

 revolutions. 



The adoption of forced lubrication, and the great extension 

 which the system of ring lubrication has taken within recent 

 years, may justly be considered as the outcome of Mr. Tower's 

 researches. Mr. Tower had some difficulty in interpreting his 

 results, as he held that, the friction in a well-lubricated journal 

 being found to be wholly fluid friction, the coefficient should 

 vary as the square of the linear velocity of the rubbing surfaces ; 

 but, as a matter of fact, it was found to increase much less 

 rapidly. The explanation was provided by Professor Osborne 

 Reynolds, whose experiments showed that up to a certain critical 

 velocity, fluid friction varied directly as the velocity, and not as 

 the square. In fact, once the friction begins to vary as the 

 square of the velocity, the lubricant ceases to lubricate. 



Perhaps the great disappointment of Mr. Tower's life was 

 the failure of the Admiralty to adopt his " steady platform " for 

 guns and search-lights at sea. By a most ingenious gyroscopic 

 device Mr. Tower succeeded in maintaining within half a degree 

 the horizontally of a gun-platform mounted on shipboard, in 

 spite of the oscillations of the vessel. The device was tested by 

 the Admiralty, who certainly encouraged the inventor to devote 



