PBESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3 



in a summary of this kind, nor can we forget Tycho Brahe 

 in his self exile for 20 years, in his lonely Baltic isle, and 

 his observations there, unassisted as he was, by modern 

 telescopes. 



Cardan and Tartaglia, already mentioned, as well as 

 Ubaldi, may be said to have created the science of 

 mechanics, which has, more than any other, helped engin- 

 eering, while the great name of Galileo, who for versatility 

 of genius, is one of the greatest of human names, advanced 

 it largely by his experiments in statics and dynamics, and 

 in the invention of the telescope. It was finely said of 

 him, at the time, that by this feat, he had seen more than 

 all the eyes that had gone before, and had opened the eyes 

 of all that were to come after him. 



Hydrostatics, which, with hydraulics, governs the oper- 

 ations of water supply and sewerage engineering, and in 

 which no advance had been made since the time of 

 Archimedes, was investigated in the same century by 

 Stivinius, and from William Gilbert, an Englishman of 

 Queen Elizabeth's reign, we have a Latin treatise on the 

 magnet, in which the dawn of electrical science is dimly 

 perceived, and in which so little was clone, since, up to the 

 middle of the last century. 



But all this had no interest for the constructing engi- 

 neers, or mechanics, as they were then called, of that time. 

 The great rule of thumb reigned supreme and undisputed. 

 Francis Bacon, in his Fllum labyrinthi, wrote, " The 

 mechanics take small light from natural philosophy, and do 

 but spin on their own little threads," and the reproach, in 

 which his far-seeing intellect is well shewn, might have 

 been justified for many generations after him. 



James Watt, notably, and some others in the early days 

 of modern engineering, did, undoubtedly, bring the dim 

 lamp of the science of their day to light up their work, but 



