1887.] 



President's Address. 



187 



made only in the laboratory. The Jubilee was duly celebrated by 

 the Society of Telegraph Engineers. The name of our former Fellow 

 Wheatstone will go down to posterity as having occupied a forefnost 

 place in this great practical application of Oersted's fertile discovery. 



I will just briefly allnde to another outcome of scientific research. 

 The last half-century was well advanced when our Fellow Dr. Perkin, 

 by utilising a colour reaction which had been employed by chemists 

 as a test for aniline, laid the foundation of the industry of the coal- 

 tar colours, which has now attained such great proportions, and the 

 investigation of the chemical theory of which has occupied the atten- 

 tion of so many eminent chemists from our own Fellow Dr. Hofmann 

 onwards. 



There is yet another Jubilee connected with this same year in which 

 our Society is if possible still more closely connected : it is now just 

 200 years since the publication of the first edition of that immortal 

 work, the " Principia " of Newton. Some of the important results 

 embodied in the "Principia" had previously been communicated to 

 the Royal Society. 



But restricting our view to the last half-century alone, we can 

 hardly help casting a glance at the progress of science, and of the 

 practical applications of science, within that period. In electricity, 

 I have already referred to the electric telegraph, now passed into the 

 management of a department of the State, and inwoven in our daily 

 life, with its w^ires stretching all round the earth like the nerves in 

 the body, and placing us in immediate connexion with distant 

 countries. Much more recent than the invention of the electric 

 telegraph is that, in some respects, still more wonderful apparatus 

 for communication at a distance afforded by the telephone. The 

 application of electricity to lighting purposes, of which we have 

 availed ourselves for the lighting of the apartments of our own 

 Society, is an industrial outcome of Faraday's discovery of magneto- 

 electric induction which could not have been thought of when the 

 account of that discovery first appeared in our Transactions. It is 

 true that what I have just been mentioning with respect to electricity 

 consists of industrial applications rather than the discovery of new 

 scientific principles ; but these industrial applications react upon 

 abstract science beneficially in more ways than one. The possibility 

 of useful applications induces theorists to engage in investigations 

 which they might not otherwise have thought of, the result of which 

 is oftentimes to lead them to a clearer apprehension of fundamental 

 principles, and to induce them to undertake exact quantitative deter- 

 minations of fundamental constants. Moreover, the grand scale on 

 which apparatus for actual commercial use has to be constructed, 

 renders it possible for scientific men, through the courtesy of those 

 who direct the construction, to make interesting experiments on a 



