Ill 



1857, I communicated to the owner of the experimental data ; and he 

 has since applied it to practice with complete success." This circum- 

 stance no doubt led to his addressing himself to the theory of ships. 

 With this object in view, he investigated the form and mechanical work 

 both of sea-waves and of waves in canals, the waves which accompany 

 ships, the loss of work consequent on the formation of divergent waves, 

 the stream-lines or lines of motion of water flowing past a ship, the 

 effect of the combined oscillation of a ship and a wave, the steadying 

 effect of keel-resistance, and many other important points of the hydraulics 

 of a ship. On nearly all these points he did important original work, 

 although in many of them the credit must be shared between him and 

 others who were working abreast of him — notably Sir W. Thomson and 

 Mr. W. Froude. He also studied the question of propulsion, and placed 

 its theory on a sound basis. This branch of knowledge owes more to 

 Bankine than to any other writer. 



His principal published works are his ' Manual of Applied Mechanics,' 

 a volume of about 640 pages, published in 1858 ; his ' Manual of the 

 Steam-Engine and other Prime Movers,' a volume of 580 pages, pub- 

 lished in 1859; his 'Manual of Civil Engineering,' a volume of 780 

 pages, published in 1862 ; his ' Manual of Machinery and Millwork,' a 

 volume of 580 pages, published in 1869 ; and his book of ' Useful Eules 

 and Tables,' published in 1866. Besides these, he was the corresponding 

 editor of, and principal contributor to, the great work of ' Ship-building, 

 Theoretical and Practical,' by "Watts, Napier, Barnes, and Bankine, 

 published in 1864-66. All these treatises have the great merits of being 

 exhaustive, dropping out or avoiding no part of their subject, of bringing 

 down their scientific information close upon the very date of their 

 publication, and of having all their results reduced to a workable form. 

 "When it is added that they are terse and concise almost to a fault, and 

 that they cover the whole of the ground from simple addition to the appli- 

 cation of elliptic functions in pure mathematics, and from the common 

 lever to the ellipsoids of stress and of rotation, and to the friction of 

 gases, in applied mathematics, some idea may perhaps be formed of the 

 immense mass of knowledge which Bankine succeeded not only in ac- 

 quiring, but in reducing to a shape available in the every-day work of 

 practical men. 



As an instance of the wide generality of his interest in scientific 

 research, may be mentioned his papers in the ' Engineer ' of 1869, in 

 which he explained the curious dynamical theory of the bicycle, or two- 

 wheeled velocipede, which had just then come into general use. These 

 papers are still the most complete treatise on the subject. 



The joint report of Professor Bankine and Dr. Stevenson Macadam 

 on the accident which took place in 1872 at the Tradeston Elour-Mills, 

 by the explosive firing of air charged with flour-dust, is also a most re- 

 markable proof of his power to handle work of a miscellaneous character. 



In the ' Catalogue of Scientific Papers,' compiled under the care of the 



