!28 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Sept. 7, 1888. 



know, for fifty-seven years the Association has carried on its 

 labours under Sections, and has earned the right to say that it has 

 done good service to all branches of Science. 



Composed, as the Association is, of a union of separate Sections, 

 it is only right and according to the fitness of things that, as time 

 goes on, your Presidents should be selected, in some sort of rota- 

 tion, from the various Sections. This year it was felt, by the Coun- 

 cil and the Members, that the time had once more arrived when 

 Section G — the Mechanical Section — might put forward its claim 

 to be represented in the Presidency ; the last time on which a 

 purely. engineering Member filled the chair having been at Bristol in 

 1875, when that position was occupied by Sir John Havkshaw. 

 It is true that at Southampton, in 1882, our lamented friend Sir 

 William Siemens was President, and it is also true that he was a 

 most thorough engineer and representative of Section G ; but all 

 who knew his great scientific attainments will probably agree that, 

 on that occasion, it was rather the Physical Section A which was 

 represented, than the Mechanical Section G. 



I am aware it is said Section G does not contribute much to 

 pure Science by original research, but that it devotes itself more 

 to the application of Science. There may be some foundation for 

 this assertion, but I cannot refrain from the observation, that when 

 Engineers, such as Siemens, Rankine, Sir William Thomson, Fair- 

 bairn, or Armstrong make a scientific discovery, Section A says it 

 is made, not in the capacity of an Engineer, and, therefor e, does 

 not appertain to Section G, but in the capacity of a Physicist, and 

 therefore appertains to Section A —an illustration of the danger of 

 a man's filling two positions, of which the composite Prince-Bishop 

 is the well-known type. But I am not careful to labour this point, 

 or even to dispute that Section G does not do much for original 

 research. I don't agree it is a fact, but for the purposes of this 

 evening I will concede it to be so. But what then ? This Asso- 

 ciation is for the 'Advancement of Science " — the Advancement, be 

 it remembered ; and I wish to point out to you, and I trust I shall 

 succeed in establishing, that for the Advancement of Science it is 

 absolutely necessary there should be the Application of Science, and 

 that, therefore, the Section, which as much as any other (or, to 

 state the fact more truly, which more than any other) in the Asso- 

 ciation applies Science is doing a very large share of the work of 

 advancing Science, and is fully entitled to be periodically repre- 

 sented in the Presidency of the whole Association. 



I trust also I shall prove to you that applications of Science and 

 discoveries in pure Science act and react the one upon the other. 

 I hope in this to carry the bulk of my audience with me, although 

 there are some, I know, whose feelings, from a false notion of 

 respect for Science, would probably find vent in the "toast" which 

 one has heard in another place — this " toast " being attributed to 

 the Pure Scientist — " Here's to the latest scientific discovery: may 

 it never do any good to anybody ! " 



To give an early illustration of this action and reaction, which I 

 contend occurs : take the well-worn story of Galileo, Torricelli, and 

 the pump-maker. It is recorded that Galileo first, and his pupil 

 Torricelli afterwards, were led to investigate the question of atmo- 

 spheric pressure, by observing the failure of a pump to raise water by 

 " suction " above a certain level. Perhaps you will say the pump- 

 maker was not applying science, but was working without science. 

 I answer, he was unknowingly applying it, and it was from that 

 which arose in this unconscious application that the mind of the 

 Pure Scientist was led to investigate the subject, and thereupon to 

 discover the primary fact, of the pressure of the atmosphere, and the 

 subsidiary facts which attend thereon. It may appear to many of 

 you that the question of the exercise of pressure by the atmosphere 

 should have been so very obvious, but little merit ought to have 

 accrued to the discoverer ; and that the statement, once made, must 

 have been accepted almost as a mere truism. This %vas, however, 

 by no means the case. Sir Kenelm Digby, in his " Treatise on the 

 Nature of Bodies," printed in 165S, disputes the proposition alto- 

 gether, and says, in effect, he is quite sure, the failure of the pump 

 to raise water was due to imperfect workmanship of some kind or 

 description, and had nothing to do with the pressure of the air, and 

 that there is no reason why a pump should not suck up water to any 

 height. He cites the boy's sucker, which, when applied to a smooth 

 stone will lift it, and he says the reason why the stone follows the 

 sucker is this : Each body must have some other body in contact 

 with it. Now, the stone being in contact with the sucker, there is 

 no reason why that contact should be broken up for the mere pur- 

 pose of substituting the contact of another body, such as the air. 

 It seems pretty clear, therefore, that even to an acute and well- 

 trained mind, such as that of Sir Kenelm Digby, it was by no means 

 a truism, and to be forthwith accepted when once stated, that the 

 rise of water on the "suction side" of a pump was due to atmo- 

 spheric pressure. I hardly need point out that the pump-maker 

 should have been a member of " G." Galileo and Torricelli, led to 



reflect by what they saw, should have been members of " A " of the 

 then "Association for the Advancement of Science." 



But passing away from the question of the value of the application 

 of science of a date some two and a half centuries ago, let us come 

 a little nearer to our own times. 



Electricity— known in its simplest form to the Greeks by the 

 results arising from the friction on amber, and named therefrom ; 

 afterwards produced from glass cylinder machines, or from plate 

 machines; and produced a century ago by the "Influence" 

 machine — remained, as did the discoveries of Volta and Galvani, 

 the pursuit of but a few, and even the brilliant experiments of Davy 

 did not suffice to give very great -impetus to this branch of physical 

 science. 



Ronalds, in 1823, constructed an electric telegraph. In 1837 the 

 first commercial use was made of the telegraph, and from that time 

 electrical science received an impulse such as it had never before 

 experienced. Further scientific facts were discovered ; fresh appli- 

 cations were made of these discoveries. These fresh applications 

 led to renewed vigour in research, and there were the action and 

 reaction of which I have spoken. In the year 187 1 the Society of 

 Telegraph Engineers was established. In the year 1861 our own 

 Association had appointed a Committee to settle the question of 

 electrical standards of resistance, which Committee, with enlarged 

 functions, continued its labours for twenty years, and of this Com- 

 mittee I had the honour of being a member. The results of the 

 labours of that Committee endure (somewhat modified, it is true), 

 and may be pointed to as one of the evidences of the value of the 

 work done by the British Association. Since Ronald's time, hew 

 vast are the advances which have been made in electrical communi- 

 cation of intelligence, by land lines, by submarine cables all over the 

 world, and by the telephone ! Few will be prepared to deny the 

 statement that pure electrical science has received an enormous im- 

 pulse, and has been advanced by the commercial application of 

 electricity to the foregoing, and to purposes of lighting. Since this 

 latter application, scores, I may say hundreds, of acute minds have 

 been devoted to electrical science, stimulated thereto by the possi- 

 bilities and probabilities of this application. 



In this country, no doubt, still more would have been done if the 

 lighting of districts from a central source of electricity had not been, 

 since 1882, practically forbidden by the Act passed in that year. 

 This Act had in its title the facetious statement that it was "to 

 facilitate Electrical Lighting," although it is an Act which, even 

 modified as it has been this year, is still a great discouragement of 

 free enterprise, and a bar to progress. The other day a member of 

 the House of Commors was saying to me, " I think it is very much 

 to our discredit in England that we should have allowed ourselves t:> 

 be outrun in the distribution of electric lighting to houses, by th t 

 inhabitants of the United States, and by those of other countries." 

 Looking upon him as being one of the authors of the "facetious" 

 Act, I thought it pertinent to quote the case of the French parricid ;, 

 who, being asked what he has to say in mitigation of punishment, 

 pleads, "Pity a poor orphan" — the parricide and the legislator being 

 both of them authors of conditions of things which they affect to 

 deplore. I will say no more on this subject, for I feel that it would 

 not be right to take advantage of my position here to-night to urge 

 Political Economy views, which should be reserved for Section F. 

 I will merely, and as illustrative of my views of the value of the 

 application of Science to Science itself, say there is no branch of 

 physics pursued with more zeal and with more happy results than 

 that of electricity, with its allies, and there is no branch of Science 

 towards which the public looks with greater hope of practical bene- 

 fits ; a hope that, I doubt not, will be strengthened after we have 

 had the advantage of hearing one of the ablest followers of that 

 science, Professor Ayrton, who, on Friday next, has been good 

 enough to promise to discourse on " The Electrical Transmission of 

 Power." 



One of the subjects which, as much as (or probably more than) 

 any other, occupies the attention of the engineer, and therefore of 

 Section G, Is that of (the so-called) Prime Movers, and I will say 

 boldly that, since the introduction of printing by the use of movable 

 type, nothing has done so much for civilisation as the development 

 of these machines. Let us consider these prime movers — and, first, 

 in the comparatively humble function of replacing that labour which 

 might be performed by the muscular exertion of human beings, a 

 function which at one time was looked upon by many kindly but 

 short-sighted men as taking the bread out of the mouth of the 

 labourer (as it was called), and as being therefore undesirable. I 

 remember revisiting my old schoolmaster, and his saying to me, 

 shaking his head : — " So you have gone the way I always feared you 

 would, and are making things of iron and brass, to do the work of 

 men's hands." 



It must be agreed that all honest and useful labour is honourable, 

 but when that labour can be carried out without the exercise of any 



