1889.] 



President's Address. 



451 



published a few papers giving the results of his researches, and 

 was also the author of a useful glossary of mineralogy, as well as of 

 translations of popular geological works. 



On the 21st of April, our late Fellow Robert Stirling Newall 

 passed away at the age of eighty-seven. Mr. Newall, as a successful 

 manufacturer, is well known through the improvements which he 

 effected in the construction of iron rope, which rendered him, we 

 may say, one of the chief founders of an important branch of national 

 industry, and through his success in the construction of those sub- 

 marine cables which play so important a part in the conveyance of 

 intelligence all over the civilized world. But he did not confine him- 

 self to the industrial application of scientific principles ; he took a 

 leading step in the development of the refracting telescope. At the 

 time of the Exhibition of 1862, the largest refracting telescope in 

 operation was the 16 -inch one at Pulkowa. Messrs. Chance, of 

 Birmingham, placed in that exhibition two disks of optical glass, one 

 of flint and one of crown, of far larger size, about 26 inches in 

 diameter. These Mr. Newall, being possessed of ample means, 

 purchased, with the intention of trying what could be done for astro- 

 nomical observation by the use of a telescope far larger, of its kind, 

 than had hitherto been used. The construction was confided to Cooke, 

 of York, so well known for the excellence of his optical work. The 

 instrument was erected at Mr. Ne wall's residence at Gateshead, and 

 is pronounced by competent judges to be of first-rate excellence. The 

 atmospheric conditions of Gateshead were not however favourable 

 for the use of so grand an instrument ; and shortly before his death 

 Mr. Newall offered it to the University of Cambridge. This generous 

 offer was referred, as is usual in such cases, to a Committee for report. 

 The Committee have issued a provisional report in which they 

 testify to the excellence of the instrument, and recommend its 

 acceptance; but the final arrangements to be proposed are still under 

 consideration. 



By the death of James Prescott Joule, the Society has this year 

 lost one of its Fellows whose name will go down to posterity in con- 

 nexion with his memorable researches on the mechanical equivalent 

 of heat. The circumstances of his birth would naturally have led 

 him to devote himself to commercial pursuits, but the bent of his 

 mind, animated in early years by the instruction he received from the 

 illustrious Dalton, led him to devote himself mainly to the pursuit of 

 science. As in the case of Faraday, his investigations were carried 

 on without the aid of mathematics, at least of the higher mathematics. 

 But, like Faraday, he seemed to have a sort of intuitive apprehension 

 of physical laws. His early scientific studies led him into the domain 

 of electricity, and its connexion with heat ; and he showed that when 

 a voltaic current passes through a conducting wire the heat gene- 



