2 C. 0, BURGE. 



by this Society, which is the chief and oldest representative 

 of science in Australasia, of engineering as one of its 

 branches, emphasize^ by the fact of the election to the 

 high office of President, of two engineers previously, and 

 now a third, in my own person. 



In the earlier ages, we may surmise, that the connexion, 

 which is the subject of this address, was closer than in 

 later times, for though, as regards the great ancient 

 engineering works now extant in Egypt, and throughout 

 the Roman Empire, the names of the designers are, to a 

 large extent lost, we may yet be fairly sure that, it being 

 before the age of specialism, the science of engineering, 

 necessary for those monuments of human skill, were con- 

 centrated in the same individuals. As scientists whose 

 theories helped engineering in the classic period, might be 

 mentioned Thales, Anaxagoras, Ptolemy, Euclid, Hippar- 

 chus, Appolonius, but above all, Archimedes. 



After the work of the Ancients, we find that of the Moors 

 of Spain, prominent in this connection, as illustrated by the 

 survival of several scientific terms such as algebra and 

 chemistry, which are Arabic in origin. Leonardo da Vinci, 

 whose fame as an artist makes us forget that he was also 

 a scientist and engineer, treated of the laws of motion, 

 before the end of the 15th century, though his works were 

 not printed till 100 years later. Euclid was translated 

 from the Greek early in the 16th century, and Cardan and 

 Tartaglia, in the same age, became the founders of the 

 higher algebra. An Englishman, Robert Record, invented, 

 in 1557, the signs since used for plus and minus, and the 

 two parallel horizontal lines for equality, and though this 

 seems to us a small thing, we must remember that facilities 

 of this sort were no trifles, in the birth of the science. 



Astronomy, in its help to geodesy, has had much to do 

 with engineering, so that Copernicus can hardly be left out 



